


Second Chances in an Unknown Land

by winter_hiems



Category: Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Legacy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Autistic David Haller, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Jewish Character, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Charles is a Sweetheart, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Logan (2017), M/M, Mental Health Issues, Old mutants in love, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Logan (2017), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resurrection, Teenage Mutants in Love, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21660097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems
Summary: After the events of Logan, Charles is resurrected into an alternate universe. It’s a decade before mutants started dying out; a decade before dementia started working its way through his mind. At first the new dimension seems almost exactly like his old world, but the closer Charles looks, the more extreme the differences. In this world, Charles has a son.After a year of chaos following his father’s death, David Haller has finally managed to get his life on track. He has an amazing girlfriend, he’s reconnected with his mother, and he’s finally got his mental illness under control. Mostly. And then Charles Xavier comes back to life.(Set after the events of X-Men Legacy (2012) and Logan (2017), designed to be accessible if you haven’t read the comics.)
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Gabrielle Haller/Charles Xavier (past), Ruth Aldine/David Haller
Comments: 4
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1: Charles

So he was back. Alive again, because nobody seemed to stay dead for long these days. It was an alternate universe, but there was no point in complaining about imperfect resurrection. There was no way back. 

The last thing he remembered was claws in his chest. Whatever that thing had been, it wasn’t Logan. He had no way of helping Logan or Laura from this world, but he hoped that they found somewhere safe. Logan deserved to find some peace, to build a family. 

The body Charles had been reborn into was a few decades younger than the one he’d died in, and for the first time in years his thoughts were perfectly clear. He couldn’t risk telling anyone what had happened. Charles glanced over at Ororo, who was driving him back to Westchester. He was sick from the guilt. _I killed you. I had a seizure and I killed you. I didn’t mean to but it’s still my fault._ But what could he do? She clearly expected him to go back to his old life, and Charles anticipated that the other X-Men would expect the same. He didn’t deserve their loyalty, but he couldn’t bear the idea of confessing to them. 

So he’d go back to his old life: teaching, helping people, and the guilt he would have to carry with him would be its own punishment. He had a decade, perhaps even fifteen years before his mind began to degenerate. At the first sign of dementia he’d move out of the mansion and start mixing telepathy suppressants into his food. 

Everything in this dimension was so similar to how it had been in his old world, before everything had gone wrong. The gate and the trees that lined the driveway. The fountain and the house. 

The combination of early morning and the beginning of the summer holidays meant that the teenage residents of the mansion were either home with their families or sleeping in, leaving the mansion’s many corridors empty. Ororo found Logan and Kitty in the kitchen, and after that there were hugs. 

Charles couldn’t stop looking at Logan. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the man happy, but here he was beaming down at Charles in a way that Charles would never deserve. He asked after Scott and Jean, and was told that Scott had killed the Charles from this universe, ripping him apart with the Phoenix Force. Nobody knew where Jean Grey was. 

In the end he couldn’t take it; he begged half an hour in his apartments to change clothes and get acquainted with this life and this dimension. 

Charles’ rooms hadn’t been touched after his death. The version of himself from this world had died less than a year ago, and no-one could bear to move into them. He changed into a fresh suit, and then he just sat in the middle of his bedroom for a while, turning his chair on the spot. _Murderer._ The X-Men could never know. 

He pushed those thoughts aside, and set about looking through his things. His battered copy of The Once and Future King sat on his bedside table as always. The clothes in the closet were the same. The furniture was the same. Suddenly he was desperate for a difference. Something other than Scott and Jean’s absence to prove that this wasn’t the dimension he’d lived ninety years in. So Charles checked under the false bottom of the draw in his bedside table, for that was where he kept his secrets. The search bore fruit; his family photo album was in there, and that made no sense at all. As far as Charles knew, the album contained less than two dozen pictures of Charles with his parents, the last five of which showed Charles with only his mother. 

He brought the album over to his desk and flicked through the photos idly, barely even for nostalgia. He got to the end of them, thoughtlessly turned a page, and suddenly he was staring himself in the face. 

This photo didn’t show Charles as a boy, but as a man, and not even a young man. It had been taken against a whitewashed brick wall. In the photo Charles had his arm around a boy with long black hair who wore the loose white clothing favoured by private hospitals. 

The caption read: _“David’s 11th birthday”_. 

The photo on the opposite page depicted the boy – David – kneeling, hands raised as he telekinetically floated a few books, captioned: _“David practising – Jack Wayne?”_

Charles turned another page. 

_“David’s 12th birthday” _There was a third person in this photo, a woman Charles’ age with the same black hair as David.__

Urgently, Charles flicked through more photos. David wore the same white clothes in each one, and they were taken up against the same wall each time. David’s fourteenth birthday was missing, and after that the photos were taken somewhere different: up against a wall made out of rough wooden planks. There were specs in the photograph of David’s fifteenth birthday, and Charles realised that they were snowflakes. The photographs carried on up until David turned sixteen. After that there was just blank space in the album, yet to be filled. 

Charles flipped back, and studied David’s face carefully as he grew from a small, skinny eleven-year-old to a tall, skinny sixteen-year-old. 

_He looks like me._

_He looks a lot like me._

Charles peered at the woman in the photo of David’s 12th birthday. _He looks like her as well._

He put the album down and leaned back in his chair, heart pounding with the possibility of who this boy could be. 

_This is a_ family _photo album._

He needed answers. 

* 

Charles found Ororo tending her plants in the mansion’s greenhouse, and asked for a word. He hadn’t brought the album with him; doing so felt like some kind of betrayal to the boy in the pictures. He cleared his throat. “I – ah. I found a photo album in my rooms. There were some pictures of a boy. He looked like this.” Charles summoned a small illusion to his fingertips, showing sixteen-year-old David. “I wondered if you knew who he might be.” 

“You don’t know?” Ororo’s lips parted in shock. “You’re sure you never met him in your world?” 

“I’m positive that I’ve never seen him in my life.” 

She bit her lip. “I… there’s no easy way to say this. He’s your son.” 

*

They were in Charles’ study, and he gripped the cup of tea Ororo handed him; if he held it tight enough perhaps his hands would stop shaking. He didn’t want her to see his hands shake but _oh God I have a son._

Ororo was talking and Charles forced himself to focus. This was important. This was vital. 

“His full name’s David Charles Haller. He’s seventeen. From what I understand, when he was very young he developed dissociative identity disorder. Multiple personalities. But he also manifested his mutations as a child, so the personalities tied themselves to his abilities. One controlled telepathy, one controlled telekinesis, and so on. He’s thought to be the most powerful mutant on the planet, but his mental health was always unstable and if an alternate personality took over he almost always ended up hurting people. 

“He was kept in a facility on Muir Island until he was fourteen, when the Shadow King attacked him. After that you sent him to recover in a clinic in the Himalayas. When you died, David sensed it. He lost control of his powers and levelled the place. Maybe a hundred or so dead. From there he went on the run, and the X-Men went after him. We caught up to him in Japan, and I’m ashamed to say that we didn’t meet him as friends. We were biased, I suppose. All of us were thinking of him as a dangerous mutant in need of containment, not a vulnerable young person mourning the loss of a parent. We fought him, and he took us down in under five minutes. 

“After that I’m not sure what he did. We’d see news reports sometimes, people who hated mutants being stopped. Ruth Aldine, David’s girlfriend, would tell us that it was him. She wanted us to think of him more kindly, but even then we didn’t trust him. From what I heard he even got into a fight with Scott. David let Scott beat him black and blue and then suddenly he just… got up and walked away. We tried to keep tabs on him but even then we never knew for sure where he was or what he was doing. 

“About three months ago something went wrong with David’s powers. Ruth was there, but she refuses to talk about what happened next. All we know was that David vanished. Ruth was certain that he was dead. We all were. Two months later he turned up in hospital. He’d been found unconscious in the middle of nowhere. I think after that he just went back to doing what he always did – saving mutants, stopping mutantphobes. We don’t really see him around the mansion.” 

“Do you know where he is? Is he safe?” Charles felt as if he’d been punched in the chest. He had a million questions with a billion possible answers, but confirming David’s safety came first. 

“I’m sorry. He can’t be tracked with Cerebro, and we’re probably the last people he’d give his location to. Perhaps you could ask Ruth when she wakes up.” 

*

After that Charles could only go to the filing room in the basement. He had a responsibility to David. Parents should know their children. 

He located the folders with David’s name on the spine and trawled through them under the harsh artificial light. It was all there: appointments with therapists, medication that hadn’t worked, speculation that David might also be schizophrenic that was disproved a few pages later. Some of the phrases, written in his own handwriting, turned his stomach: 

_“I don’t want this to happen. But he’s become a danger to others, and if he ends up hurting someone badly I know he’ll never forgive himself. At this stage, an induced coma is the kindest option…”_

Charles slammed the folder shut. Maybe some of the treatments had helped, but others should never have been used on anyone, let alone a child. The version of himself from this world had either been uncaring or desperate. As he left the filing room and entered the lift he thought about David Haller spending his whole life isolated. Those sterile white clothes. He hadn’t even been allowed shoes with laces. At eleven years old David’s photographed smile had been genuine, but by the time he was sixteen it no longer reached his eyes. 

How exactly would D.I.D. manifest in the mind of a telepath? Did Charles even have what it took to parent a mentally ill child? Did he even have a right to try, when he had maybe a dozen years before his own grip on reality would start to loosen? 

David probably wouldn’t even accept Charles as a replacement for the father he’d lost. 

*

He went back to his office. The news of his return had spread so there were several minutes of faking good cheer for the sake of the students who’d just woken up before he could finally drop the smile behind closed doors. He needed to make a call. The name was in the files and the number was in the address book: Gabrielle Haller, the Israeli Ambassador to England. It was just about midday in her time zone; he hoped she hadn’t gone to lunch yet. 

“Hello, this is Ambassador Haller speaking.” No trace of an accent. 

“Gabrielle.” 

A gasp from the other end of the line. “Charles? You’re alive again?” 

“Something like that. I came through from an alternate dimension.” 

“…Of course.” She sounded disapproving, as if conclusive proof of multiverse theory was somehow in bad taste. 

“I need you to help me with something.” 

“My schedule’s a little full over the next few days. What is it?” 

“In the world I came from I didn’t have a son.” 

A long pause. “It… must have come as a shock.” 

“It did. No-one here seems to know where he is, so I thought he might be with you. It will probably be an awful shock for him to find out that I’m alive, so I understand if he doesn’t want to talk to me, but I’d at least like to know that he’s safe.” 

“Charles, I wish I could say that David’s here living with me, but I can’t. David knows that I love him but that’s not enough to make him fully trust me. Too much water under that bridge.” 

“I’m sorry.” Then, because he had to ask: “Gabrielle, were we ever… I mean we weren’t married, obviously, but I wondered if…” 

She was quick to deny. “No. No, we weren’t in love. You were in Israel for a conference and I saw an opportunity for some fun with a side of intelligent conversation. It lasted only a few weeks. Long enough, I suppose, for David to begin. I thought I was too old to have children. I never told you I was going to have a baby. I was a lawyer, you see. I knew the statistics. When a man and a woman both apply for custody of a child it usually ends up with the father. I lost my whole family to Bergen-Belsen, and David seemed like a chance to rebuild. 

“His powers came when he was three months old. Telekinesis, at first. I’ll admit I was scared. I’d never had anything to do with mutants and I didn’t know how to go about raising a mutant child, but I stuck with it. He was a sweet boy, but he could be very quiet at times. He got his autism diagnosis early, but that I could handle. He never made any trouble, though when we moved to Paris he found the change a little trying. After a few months he was alright and he was very happy when I married his stepfather, Daniel. And for a few years I had my perfect family. 

“When David was six an extremist group attacked the embassy where I worked. Daniel was gunned down in front of David’s eyes, and I suppose that was what broke him. The next time I looked into his eyes there was… something else staring back at me. 

“I had him moved to a psychiatric facility on Muir Island, in Scotland. I visited when I could but even then I could see David getting worse and worse. The alternate personalities went from chaotic to violent. In the end I had to call you. We found out the cause in the end, some of the doctors had got it into their heads to run experiments on him. David was mute back then, he couldn’t tell anyone what was happening. And even when that was over his condition was still there, more personalities manifesting every day. 

“When he was thirteen, something called the Shadow King attacked him. He was left in such a state that the only option was an induced coma. A year later he was woken up and moved to the Himalayas. Someone you knew ran a facility there for sick telepaths. I’m ashamed to say I never visited him after that. At first the idea of seeing him was too difficult, and after that, staying away became far too easy. 

“After you died I knew David was on the run, but it was several months before he reached out to me. He gave me an ultimatum: I could see him a few times a year, but only if I accepted him, as a mutant and as a mentally ill person. I agreed. I had to. I hadn’t realised how much I missed him. And he was right that I gave up on him, I should have tried harder. But neither of us were ever very good at making an effort for David and we were fools to think he wouldn’t notice.” 

“I wasn’t there for him either?” 

“You barely visited more often than I did. I’ve been smart enough not to ask for forgiveness. If I try to push the subject I know it would only make him resent me more.” 

“We failed him, didn’t we? No wonder he doesn’t want anything to do with the X-Men. Or the school.” 

“Don’t give up yet. Things are getting better between us. He’s let me give him an allowance. He even said he might stay over for Hannukah this year. David reached out to me and he might reach out to you, especially since it wasn’t technically you who hurt him. You have a chance, Charles.” 

“You really think so?” 

“David loves us. We broke his trust but he knows we always treasured him. I think if you give him time he might want to meet you. The tough part will be reaching him to let him know that you’re back. Perhaps I could tell him; I’ve got his phone number.” 

“Thank you Gabrielle, I’ll think about it. We have to do this delicately.” 

*

By half-past nine Charles judged that Ruth might be awake, but when he knocked on her door all he found was her pink-haired, dragonfly-winged roommate, Megan. He asked after Ruth and explained his reason for wanting her, and in reply Megan shrugged and said, “David took her out for breakfast. I don’t know when she’ll be back, they might spend the whole day together. I dunno.” Another shrug. 

Charles barely needed his telepathy to know that she was lying. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David Haller’s backstory is very similar to how it is in the comics, modified so that the timeline makes more sense. I did alter the way that Gabrielle got together with Charles to make Gabrielle have more autonomy. She’s not a fainting violet; she’s a capable, intelligent woman.
> 
> In the comics, Jack Wayne was the personality that controlled David’s telekinesis. He was destroyed when the Shadow King attacked.
> 
> Note 1: They didn’t explain how David came back to life in the comics, so I don’t have to explain how David and Charles come back to life in this fic.
> 
> Note 2: In this fic Laura Kinney is David and Ruth’s age, like in the comics, not a kid like in the movie. This will be slightly relevant later on. But not very much.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome <3
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. The characters are owned by Marvel. I am not profiting financially from this story.


	2. Chapter 2: Ruth

This was without a doubt the best way to wake up. 

Ruth smiled to herself as she glanced over at David, lying on his side with one arm slung around her waist, beams of summer sunlight streaking through the curtains to paint his bare skin gold. She let herself take a moment to admire him. With his features stilled by sleep he looked incredibly delicate. 

David cracked open one eye – the green one – and said, “You know I can tell when you’re checking me out, right?” 

Ruth blushed. “How long have you been awake?” 

“Like half an hour. But we both know how much you like watching me when you think I don’t know you’re there.” He opened his other eye, the blue one, and propped his head up on his fist. “You look beautiful today.” 

“You tell me that practically every day.” 

“That’s because it’s literally always true.” 

“You are so corny.” 

“Are you saying I need to improve my pillow talk?” 

David flashed a grin and she pulled him close. His lips found hers eagerly and after that the world shrunk to her hand running up the muscles in his back and the taste of his mouth, until she glanced over at the clock on the bedside table. “Shit. I didn’t mean to sleep in that much.” 

She slipped from the covers and pulled on her robe, then went to shower. After that, David showered while she dressed, which took longer than usual because at first she couldn’t find her blindfold. She was still getting used to David seeing her without it. She’d spent her whole life hiding the fact that underneath that strip of cloth were neither eyes nor eye sockets: just blank, featureless skin. 

Ruth still wasn’t used to someone thinking she was beautiful without the blindfold. She wasn’t used to anyone thinking she was beautiful, period. She told herself that by their one-year anniversary she would be able to accept David’s compliments without getting self-conscious. 

She found the blindfold (it had gotten kicked under the bed the night before), and tied it on just before David emerged damp from the shower. He pulled on some sweatpants and they went to make breakfast together. 

Ruth’s omelettes weren’t awful, but David’s were amazing, so instead Ruth was in charge of making the smoothies while the radio blared Queen. 

Once breakfast was over Ruth re-packed her overnight bag, and David waved one hand at a wall, creating a swirling portal of yellow light. He kissed her quickly, and said, “Have good day. Love you.” 

“Love you too.” 

She looked back at him over her shoulder before she stepped through into her bedroom. Once the portal had closed behind her she found herself face to face with Megan. 

“Ruth Aldine, you are in deep shit.” 

*

“I told him that David took you out for breakfast, but he’s like, the world’s most powerful telepath, so he probably knew I was lying.” 

Ruth sat down on her bed and put her face in her hands. “What – thank you, sorry  – what am I going to tell David? Yes, this will break him.” 

“Yeah. I mean, we all know what he did when the Professor died.” 

“He didn’t – no  – do that. It was the alters – sorry, yes  – it wasn’t his fault.” 

“I know.” Megan looked at Ruth with a mixture of pity and concern. “Just be careful when you tell him. Stay safe.” 

“David would – sorry  – never hurt me.” 

“In the meantime, you can work out what you’re going to tell the Professor. He wants to talk to you. How strong are your shields? Because you’ll want them strong so he doesn’t find out that you’ve been screwing his son.” 

“Megan, this is serious! I need to tell David. As soon as possible, so he won’t think I was hiding it from him.” 

Megan didn’t say a word for several seconds, and Ruth realised it was shock at how she had said that without stammering. In the end her roommate flicked her wings and headed for the door. “I’ll give you space to tell him. But remember what I said about being careful.” 

For her birthday, David had allowed Ruth to form a psychic bond with him. It allowed their minds to always be linked. All Ruth had to do was relax, and she could feel her connection with David, and a few of his emotions filtering through the link. At first he’d been terrified of it, worried that one of his alters might use the bond to break into her mind, but after the first few weeks passed with no incident they'd both begun to enjoy the extra degree of intimacy. 

When he’d died the bond had snapped, but after he came back they’d reconnected it. Some days when Ruth woke up alone in her room in Westchester she would panic, because what if the past month had been a dream and David was still dead? On those terrifying mornings she would reach for the link and David would always be there. It seemed almost sacrilegious to use the bond for what she was about to do. 

Ruth closed her eyes and reached. _David?_

His mind responded instinctively, sending sensations of _love-happy-calm_ before he replied. _Did you forget something? I don’t think you left anything here but I can check anyway._

_David, something happened while I was with you. You’re not going to like it, but you’ll want to know. It’s bad. It’s really, really bad, and I’m sorry._

_What is it? Are you alright, is there danger?_

_I’m safe. But before I tell you, I think you need to teleport somewhere remote. This could be as bad as what happened in the Himalayas._

David didn’t reply straight away, but the bond told her _pain-guilt-sorrow._ After a few moments, Ruth felt a shift as David’s location changed and he said, _Okay. I’m in the middle of nowhere. Tell me._

_Charles Xavier is alive._

Ruth felt David shatter. 

*

The anguish brought her to her knees. Through the bond David screamed, his alters joining him in a thousand different voices. Ruth clutched her head. It was too much. It was too much to bear. 

She forcibly toned the link down until all she was left with was a splitting headache. When she finally felt able to rise she found herself out of breath. It didn’t matter. Right now David was the only thing that mattered. She scribbled a quick note to Megan before opening the window and sitting on the sill. After a few slow breaths to steady her nerves she pushed off and flew. 

At first she went straight up, but once she had reached a few hundred feet she stopped to get her bearings. Focusing on the bond made her headache worse, but it had to be done if she wanted to find David. Ruth found the pull, and set off. 

She still wasn’t used to flying. It had only been three months since she’d learned how to do it, but it was easier with a destination to fix on, so she navigated with her mind, trusting her precognition to stop her from flying into anything. 

She was going too slow. The fields and cities sped below, but it was almost half an hour before the coast slipped by her and she was over the sea. 

Ruth pushed further. She reached for her powers and they answered with a surge of strength. She broke the sound barrier and kept going. 

An eternity later she was over land, Europe perhaps – had David gone to his mother in London, or to Paris, the site of his greatest trauma? But no, the minds below her thought in Spanish, and soon she was over the sea again. 

After another quick flash of land she found herself travelling along a stretch of sea peppered with small islands in the distance, and another age later she was over land again. 

It was hot, so hot that she had to use telekinesis to cool herself. If she had eyes the sun would have blinded her. The ground below was lifeless desert. 

Ruth could sense how close she was to David, and soon enough it was obvious that she’d found him. He crouched on hands and knees, a speck against the pale of the sand and rocks. The air around him rippled with the heat radiating from his body. As he raked his fingers across the ground the sand boiled into glass. 

“David.” He raised his head, eyes glowing white through the hair that had fallen in his face, a wild thing clinging to reason. 

He tried to choke out a response but found himself unable. 

She knelt as close as she dared; telekinesis could only cool her so much. “David I need you to stop the heat. I can’t come any closer to you right now.” 

He managed a nod, closed his eyes with a frown. Slowly, so slowly Ruth barely noticed it happening, the heat reduced and David began to softly glow. He bathed the desert in every colour that had ever existed and Ruth wasted no time in crossing the few metres left between them and pulling him close. “I’m sorry. He came through from an alternate dimension, one where you never existed. But he knows about you already.” 

David murmured into her shoulder. “The alters are terrified. They think he’ll lock us up again. But you’d break me out, right?” 

“Of course. And to lock you up he’d need to find you first. You’re too strong for him now, you’d get away.” 

“Did – did you see him?” 

“No, but I think someone already told him about… us.” 

“Shit.” David pulled back a little to wipe the tears from his face. “This is so fucked up.” 

“Can you teleport us out of here? It’s okay if you can’t, I’ll fly us back.” 

“No, I can do it.” The world shifted and then they were crouched in David’s cabin. Ruth took out her phone and did some quick research. 

“You should lie down.” 

“What?” 

“You’re in shock. Web MD says you should lie down.” 

“Oh, okay.” David half-collapsed onto the bed. “Fuck, what do I do now? Aside from avoid Westchester for the next thirty years.” 

Ruth curled up next to him and laid her head on his chest. “If he wants to hurt you he’ll have to come through me.” She paused. “David, are your alters…” 

“Still thoroughly freaking out. I’ve one hell of a headache coming on. Do you mind if I talk to them for a bit?” 

“No. Do what you have to do.” 

They lapsed into silence, but Ruth could feel the undercurrent of David’s communication to his split personalities through their bond. Things were far better than they’d been when she first met him, but David’s mind would never be fully whole and Ruth would never wish for it. She didn't need him to fix himself for her. 

She dozed off, only to wake when David stirred. “Okay. I’ve managed to calm them down, mostly, and only a few dozen still want to kill dad. Which is as good as it’s going to get for a while. You can go back to Westchester if you like.” She knew that this was code for David needing time to himself, but not wanting to ask her to leave. 

“Will you be alright?” 

David offered her a pained half-smile through the tears. “I’m always alright. Eventually.” 

He leaned forward and his mouth was soft against hers. “I love you.” 

“I love you too.” 

And then she stepped through a portal for the second time that day. 

*

Once she was back in the mansion Ruth started performing the subtle art of Avoiding Charles Xavier. She changed into fresh clothes, and thought about how long she could go without leaving her room. The morning’s exertions had left her dizzy with hunger; not long. She snuck down to the mansion’s least-used kitchen to make herself a sandwich, managed to eat the whole thing before anyone walked in on her, and got most of the way back to her room when she heard the whir of an electric wheelchair behind her, and an, “Excuse me, Ruth.” 

Crap. She’d hoped to have longer than that. Ruth squared her shoulders and turned. “Professor.” 

“I thought we should talk. In my office, perhaps?” 

Ruth nodded to avoid the risk of stammering. She had to keep it together, for David’s sake. 

By the time she’d closed the door to the professor’s office she still wasn’t as calm as she needed to be. She turned and he was sitting behind his desk, and it occurred to her then that this was probably the most awkward way a girl had ever been introduced to her boyfriend’s father in the history of dating. 

“Megan told me that you saw David today.” Ruth didn’t reply, so he tried again. “Does he know that I’m here?” 

Ruth reached deep inside herself to the part of her that was steel, the cold anger she felt towards anyone who’d ever hurt her or someone she loved. David often told her that she was strong. He was right. She could do this. “You have no idea how much you’re hurting him. He was getting better, every day he was happier, and now he’s lost again. He’s pretending that he can handle it so I don’t worry, but I know he’s lying because I always know. I can always tell when he’s hurting.” 

Xavier wasn’t meeting her gaze. “I wish there were a way to do this without causing him pain. But – I have to know, is he safe? Is there anything he needs?” 

“I don’t think he’ll accept anything from you. And I hope he’s safe. But –  yes – knowing David, he’s about to do something really dangerous and no-one will be able to stop him.” 

“Oh God,” said Xavier, looking genuinely worried. “Is there anything we can do?” 

“If things get really bad he’ll text me for backup, but the last time he did that he–” Ruth’s stammer choked her up, and she had to force herself to continue. “He died. I had to watch him die.” 

“Storm told me. She thinks he just went missing for a while, but you’re saying that he actually died?” 

Ruth sat down in the chair opposite the Professor. She propped her elbows on the desk and put her face in her hands. No stammering. She’d promised herself no stammering this time. “I watched it happen. His powers, they were tearing the world apart. I tried to help him, tried to stop it, but it was killing me. So… he – he did it to himself. There was no other way to end it. I watched him fall. Last month he turned up fine, but neither of us know how he came back and I’m so scared that it won’t be permanent. I mean, what if I wake up one day and he’s just not there anymore?” 

What Ruth had told the Professor felt like a betrayal. She turned and ran from the room. 

She’d never been so grateful that she was incapable of tears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot happens in this chapter.
> 
> Firstly, I wanted to portray David and Ruth as being in a really happy, stable relationship. They know each other well, they love each other, they’ve got a good idea of each other’s needs. (And, every other Saturday evening Ruth sneaks out of the mansion to spend the night with David in a way which is best known only to themselves.) This is also why Ruth doesn’t stammer in front of David; she never feels nervous around him.
> 
> Psychic bonds appear in the comics. They can be formed between any two people, as long as one of those people is a telepath. Jean Grey and Scott Summers have one.
> 
> I also wanted to point out that the reason why David starts glowing when he turns off the heat is a matter of energy. He has possession of so many powers that he’s got to let off the excess energy somehow, and the easiest way is producing heat. When Ruth needs to get near him, that heat energy is converted into safer light energy.
> 
> Ruth’s speech at the end does a bit of exposition, and I decided to leave this in because she’s been through a lot this past year. She’s fallen in love, watched the boy she loves die and then come back, and she hasn’t told anyone about it. She spills it all out to Charles because he’s the one there when she’s feeling emotionally vulnerable and protective over David.


	3. Chapter 3: David

Lying to Ruth made David’s stomach turn. 

It was unpleasant, but he had to. Ever since he’d come back to life she’d been constantly worrying about him, and he didn’t want her to be any more scared for him than usual. 

So he told her he was okay. 

He wasn’t okay. 

He curled tight into a ball on his bed, the cries of the alters drowning out his thoughts. He heard something else, a low keening sound, and realised that he was whimpering. 

_“We should kill him. We should kill Xavier so we can remain free.”_

“Leave me alone. I’m not going to kill him, he’s our father.” 

_“We should flee.”_ said another voice. 

And more voices. And more. Too much. Too loud. They piled on top of each other and mingled in his mind. 

“Please. Please stop. I can’t think. You’re stopping me from thinking. If I can’t think, I can’t make this better for us.” 

He kept pleading with them until he fell asleep. 

*

David woke to find himself curled tight in a ball. This wasn’t unusual if he’d had bad mental health the previous day. 

The alters were still terrified. _He_ was still terrified. He talked to them, suggested and begged and made veiled threats, and then fell asleep once more. 

He woke again, the alters screamed at him. _Please, let me think._

He slept. 

Finally he woke and his mind was mostly silent. 

He checked his phone and the battery was dead, so he flicked his fingers and it was fully charged. He checked the date: he’d been curled up in bed for four days. There were texts from Ruth and texts from his friends. 

David unlocked his phone, hovered his finger over the texting app, and knew he wouldn’t be able to reply to a single message. He felt hollow inside, as if his chest were made of fired clay and the slightest effort at talking to someone would leave him crushed and shattered. 

Instead he emailed his therapist asking for an emergency appointment (please, something happened and it’s bad). 

After half an hour of staring blankly at the phone screen post-email, he rolled out of bed and showered. Once he was clean he sat under the spray and sobbed. The hot water ran out and he didn’t care, the cold didn’t bother him much, and the shower cubicle felt safe. 

Then he remembered that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, four days ago. David could go over a month without food, but he’d promised Ruth that he’d try and look after himself more, and this involved eating at least once a day. 

He dragged himself from the shower, pulled on sweatpants. (Were they clean? He didn’t care.) 

Two pieces of toast, and he didn’t even spread butter on them, but he had made himself food and that was what counted. If he could make food when he felt this bad then he must be on the road to getting his life together, or at least that was what he decided to tell himself. 

His therapist had emailed back, and yes, she did have a free slot this afternoon. 

David knew he should do something in the meantime. He could read a book, or sketch, or go for a walk, but he found himself unable to move from the seat at the small table in the kitchen, as if gravity had suddenly increased and he was trapped in stasis. 

Then it was time for the appointment, and he stepped into nothingness, emerging in his therapist’s office. 

*

It hadn’t been easy for David to find a therapist. He was something of a legend in the psychiatric community, which mean that every therapist he tried instantly started fantasising about the acclaim they would get by treating him. They’d be halfway through daydreaming about a book deal when David would tell them kindly to go fuck themselves and teleport away. 

After weeks of disappointment he’d decided to change tactics. 

He’d been looking at therapists specialising in Dissociative Identity Disorder, but to be honest he was handling that, mostly. Instead he started looking for therapists who specialised in PTSD. 

David would be the first to admit that he had trauma. Truckloads of it. He needed someone to help him live with it. 

After a few weeks of searching, he’d eventually found Samirah. He’d gone to her, explained his oh-so-very-complicated situation, expecting to start sensing greed or fear or hatred of mutants. Instead she’d adjusted her hijab and said, “That must be a lot to deal with. Usually I work with adults, but I’d like to help you, if you think I’d be a good fit.” 

In the emergency appointment David told her how a man who was his father, but not really, had returned, and cried on her sofa for an hour. 

*

The next day he woke feeling properly rested. Showering was doable. Breakfast was doable. Checking his phone was doable. 

Five text messages. 

One from Ruth: “I know things are worse than you’re letting on. Look after yourself and text me when you can. <3” 

One from Jono: “Professor’s back at the mansion. U ok mate?” 

One from Laura: “Are you okay?” 

One from Lorna: “I heard ur dad came back to life. If u want to talk about it give me a call.” 

And, unexpectedly, one from his mum: “David. Charles just called me. Apparently you know that he’s back. Are you all right? Do you need anything? If you want to talk I’m here for you.” 

He replied to Ruth’s text, then spent longer thinking about how he’d reply to Laura, Jono, and Lorna. He didn’t have any previous experience with friends. Maybe he’d never be used to it. 

*

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Ambassador Haller doesn’t have a son, and even if she did I doubt you’d be him.” 

“Well how about this. You got up to her office and _ask her_.” 

The man frowned. “I am not going to disturb the ambassador on the whim of an obvious fraud.” 

“She’s expecting me. I texted ahead.” 

A woman’s voice called down the corridor. “What’s happening here?” David didn’t need to look to know that it was his mother, but he did so anyway. She wore a dark grey suit, her black hair neatly styled. He suspected that she might be about to change her mind about letting him see her; that she would say she was too busy today and ask him to leave. 

David marshalled his thoughts, and cloaked the stress in irritation. “This guy won’t let me through.” 

The secretary turned, indignant. “He’s claiming to be your son, Ambassador. And I’ve told him–” 

“He is my son. And really, I always thought he looked quite like me. Now that you’ve insulted my only child, perhaps you could tell me how many of my meetings I can cancel?” 

The secretary pulled out an iPad and scrolled through it hurriedly. “Ah, all of them except your 2pm, ma’am.” 

“Cancel them. I’m spending the day with David.” 

The secretary hurried off, and David walked with his mother to her office in silence. 

She shut the door behind them and turned. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me.” 

David shrugged. “You said you’d be here for me. You’ve… literally never said that before. I guess I was just curious what form that would take.” 

Gabrielle nodded. “I promised you that I’d try harder. This is me trying. You’re hurting, aren’t you?” 

David nodded and allowed himself to be pulled into a hug. He still wasn’t used to being taller than her, but it didn’t really matter. She was his mum. She was here for him. He could cry on her shoulder for a bit and she wouldn’t judge him. 

When they finally pulled away Gabrielle asked David if he wanted to talk about Charles. “He wants to meet you. He seems genuinely concerned for your wellbeing, but I’m not going to order you to go see him.” 

David shook his head. “Honestly, I think I need a break from thinking about that. It’s such a big thing, and I don’t want to decide what to do yet.” 

She looked him up and down. “The money I sent you, is it enough?” 

“Yeah, it’s fine.” David paused for a moment. “You can’t fade away again, mum. You can’t abandon me again just because he’s back.” 

He sensed the guilt flash through his mother’s mind before she nodded. “I won’t. David, I promise. I won’t let myself lose you again.” 

*

His mother led them to a tiny kosher restaurant that was in as close to the middle of nowhere as you could get without leaving central London. 

Once they’d ordered and sat down they ended up in an uncomfortable silence, which was eventually broken by Gabrielle. “Sorry. I don’t really know what mothers talk to their children about these days.” 

“Me neither. Literally none of my friends have mothers.” 

“Really? None of them?” 

“Most mutants either have dead mothers, or mothers that don’t want them.” 

Well aware that she had been the latter, Gabrielle searched around for a change of subject. “If you need a break from America you could always stay in my spare room. I redecorated it so it would be nice for Hannukah.” 

David lost the ability to make eye contact with her, and fixed his gaze on a scratch in the wooden tabletop. “Thanks for the offer. Really, thanks. But I kind of want to stay in the same timezone as Ruth.” 

Gabrielle picked at her food. “So do I get to meet this girl at some point?” 

“Sure, I guess.” 

She grinned at him. “My baby’s all grown up and dating girls.” 

“Ugh, mum!” 

They talked. Talked about anything other than Charles Xavier: about the food and the summer heat and London’s political climate. Gabrielle had always assumed that David hadn’t inherited her penchant for political manoeuvring, but he could see the dance of agendas and opinions as well as she could. 

The time for Gabrielle’s meeting came too soon, and David said he understood, it was important, her work was important, it was fine. 

They hugged, and Gabrielle told him to visit again, as soon as he felt he could. After David teleported away they each separately realised: they were starting to become a family again. 

And David had an idea of what he should do next. 

*

The X-Men had no idea where Jean Grey and Scott Summers were living; they’d looked, but had given up after a few months. 

It took David two minutes to find them. 

They were living in Alaska, in a small house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Places like that always reminded David of ordinary people and ordinary lives. Experiences he couldn’t have; situations he would never fit into. It set him on edge. 

His alters didn't like it much either. They didn't understand why anyone would want to live somewhere with such carefully laid-out flower beds. David halfheartedly tried to explain to them that some people liked their gardens neat, but neither David nor his alters had much interest in the conversation. It was just a way to pass the time as he waited. 

Eventually Jean Grey drove off to get groceries. 

David teleported to the front door and knocked. 

When Summers opened the door and saw David his hand went instinctively to his glasses, ready for an attack. 

“Relax, Scott. If I wanted to harm you you’d already be dead. Now, first things first,” David stuck out his hand. “Truce. I bit you. You fractured two of my ribs. We’re even.” 

Scott paused before shaking his hand gingerly. “Okay.” 

“You’re wondering why I’m here. And no, I didn’t read your mind to find that out. It’s simple: Charles Xavier is alive again.” David stood and watched as Summers gasped and gripped the doorframe. He stayed silent to give the truth some time to sink in, and when Scott managed to stand up straight again he continued. “That’s why I’m here. Neither you nor Jean left any way for the X-Men to contact you. I thought you’d want to know.” 

“Did – did you see him?” 

David scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I heard from Ruth.” Then he realised he might be being insensitive, and decided to go on to the second thing he’d come to say. “You and Jean should go visit him.” 

“I killed him.” 

“So what? He’s probably already forgiven you. He’s just come back to life, and he’ll want to be with his family. And we both know that means you, not me.” 

David turned to go. There was nothing left to say. He was halfway to the gate when Scott said, “David, I’m sorry. About all of it.” 

He didn’t turn back. Even if he did, he knew he’d never be able to meet Scott’s gaze. “You weren’t the one who made him ignore me in favour of the X-Men. It’s not your fault that you were the favourite child.” 

“Yes, but not just that. I didn’t realise… Jesus, David, I fractured your ribs! Next time you need the two of us to get into a big, public fight to distract a supervillain, you don’t need to antagonize me. Just ask, and I’ll go easy.” 

David nodded. “I’ll consider it.” 

Then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comics David is autistic, and as an autistic person I’m really enjoying writing him as such. He can’t always make eye contact. Sometimes he speaks in a way that is really blunt, and only realises later that he’s being insensitive. One of the things I really liked about X-Men Legacy was that it portrayed an autistic character in a healthy romantic relationship, and I wanted to continue that in this fic. You’ll notice that David’s speech flows a lot more easily when he’s with Ruth than when he’s with anyone else. 
> 
> In the comics, David Haller deliberately antagonised Scott Summers into fighting him, in order to draw out a telepath that had been spying on him. It worked, though there was no clear winner to the fight.
> 
> David found Scott and Jean because one of his split personalities, Compass Rose, has the ability to teleport to people, not just places.
> 
> In this chapter, David realises that he’s starting to have a healthy parent-child relationship with his mother again, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to have that with Charles. He decides to encourage Scott to go visit Charles, because in David’s opinion Scott is more Charles’ son than David is.


	4. Chapter 4: Charles

Quiet, sweet, and sensible: Ruth Aldine was exactly the sort of girl Charles would have wanted David to end up with. When she told him through stammered sentences that David had agreed to visit him, Charles got the distinct impression that she had a hand in changing David’s mind. 

_Thank God for David’s taste in girlfriends._

But now there was a different kind of worry. David would be here soon and Charles was suddenly hyperaware of everything that could go wrong. How strong was David’s telepathy? What if he saw through Charles’ shields enough to find out about what Charles had done to the X-Men in his dimension? 

Charles looked over his mental walls. No weak spots. It wasn’t as if they were going to be getting into a telepathic battle. It was just a conversation. 

He adjusted his cufflinks and straightened his tie. He was wearing one of his finest suits, usually reserved only for the students’ graduation and visiting Erik in prison. David deserved to see Charles at his best. 

He had called Gabrielle a few more times in the past week. She had told him as much as she could remember of David’s early life, as well as a few vignettes from more recent years. She’d even emailed him a few pictures of David when he was a baby, which Charles had carefully printed off and put into the photo album. From their conversations Charles could understand why the other version of himself had been attracted to her, but the whole situation felt strange. The mother of his child, and they’d never even met in person. He didn’t dare ask her what David thought of him. 

The clock chimed the hour and at the same time there was a tentative knock on his office door. He called out, “Please, come in,” hoping that the nervousness stayed out of his voice. 

The door opened and he found himself staring at a slightly older version of the boy in the photographs. Average height, slim. Long black hair that looked messy but was probably also the neatest he could manage. He wore dark jeans, combat boots, and a white shirt which was slightly crumpled. Just an ordinary teenager. 

But Charles couldn’t read his mind. He hadn’t been trying, but it was force of habit for him to at least acknowledge a mind that entered the room; pick up surface thoughts, that sort of thing. When he reached for David’s mind he came up against a wall, tall and solid and unbreakable. 

David frowned. “Stop trying to read my mind.” His accent was English, tinged with Scottish from his time on Muir Island. He shut the door, crossed the room, and sat in the chair across from Charles’ desk. From the way he moved it was clear that his whole body was tense. 

Up close, Charles could see his eyes. The pictures hadn’t done them justice; a perfect example of complete blue-green heterochromia. 

Charles realised that he hadn’t spoken since inviting David in. He cleared his throat. “Sorry about trying to read your mind. It’s a habit, I’m afraid. Would you like something to drink? Perhaps some tea?” 

A muscle twitched in David’s jaw. “Let’s skip the pleasantries. Why did you want to see me?” 

“But surely you could guess that?” Charles’ voice was soft. 

“Don’t play with me. You know I’m autistic. So no, I can’t just guess things like that.” 

Charles played with his hands in his lap. “Honestly David… I just wanted to meet you.” 

“Bullshit.” David leaned forward and locked eyes with Charles. “The other you visited me twice a year. Once if he could get away with it. Any other time I saw him, it was because he wanted me to go take down someone so powerful that the X-Men couldn’t do it themselves. He’d say something slightly encouraging to trick me into thinking that he cared, and then he’d go send me to fight the Nimrod Sentinels or some other spandex-wrapped arsehole who woke up one day and decided that killing minority groups was fun. So just say what you want from me. Fuck, if the bad guy is bad enough I might even do it for you.” 

“David, I swear all I wanted was to see you.” 

“How do you expect me to believe that?” David was getting steadily more agitated, the French creeping into his accent. “The X-Men already told you what I am. And I can’t figure out any other reason why you would want to associate with someone who can do _this._ ” 

The memory hit Charles like a speeding train, smashing his shields like kindling. He found himself standing next to David on a hillside, great white flakes of snow falling around them. Detail began to come into focus. 

A second David was kneeling over a dark mound. This David was younger – he didn’t look much younger than the present David, but the white hospital clothes gave it away. 

The image sharpened, and Charles realised that the mound was the body of a man in his late sixties, grizzled and grey-haired. He lay on his back, his eyes staring at the sky, a huge wound in his chest. Young David was pressing his hands against it, trying to slow the bleeding, but Charles already knew there was no way for the man to survive such a serious injury. The man and Young David were exchanging words, but their speech was muffled, and as the snow around the pair started to stain red the man leaned his head back and his eyes closed. 

For a few moments, Young David still clutched at the body, trying to coax out some sign of life, but soon his face was a mask of grief and he accepted the awful fact for what it was. He stood, his whole body shaking, and the surroundings finally came into focus. 

Young David stood in the centre of a mile-wide blast site. Splintered wrecks marked where wooden buildings had once stood; shattered bodies showed where lives had been snuffed out. This must be the Himalayas, when David had sensed his father’s death and his powers had wreaked destruction. 

For a moment Young David turned on the spot, clutching his head and sobbing, then suddenly he seemed to come to a decision. 

He picked a direction and started to walk. Calmly, steadily. The kind of walk you could keep up for days if it was a matter of survival. Still weeping, he headed off towards the nearest mountain, and was soon lost from sight in the whirling flakes of snow. 

And then Charles was back in his office, David staring at him from across the desk. 

“His name was Merzah. He was my therapist. A good man. He thought he could help me, but he was wrong. And then I killed him, the way I killed everyone else at the clinic. Will the great Professor X leave me alone now?” 

Just like that, Charles realised what he had done wrong. This whole conversation he hadn’t been Charles Xavier. He’d been Professor X. Professor X, sitting behind a desk in a tailored suit. Professor X, serene and sophisticated and upper class. 

Now wonder David hadn’t expected to be welcomed. David, with his scruffy clothes and an accent that would be at home in the less fashionable parts of Edinburgh. Of course David had interpreted Charles’ invitation as a summons. 

David deserved a father, but instead Charles had offered him a figurehead. 

“I’m sorry.” David tilted his head at Charles’ apology and frowned, confused. “I shouldn’t have asked you here the way I did. It was selfish of me. This whole meeting I’ve been doing things wrong. And I understand if you want to leave now, but first I would like you to know that I’m not perfect either.” 

Charles dropped the remainder of his shields and opened his mind to David, offering up the memories like a sacrifice at an altar. 

He showed when the dementia started, and the seizures. The confusion and the indignity. 

The day when there was a seizure worse than the others. The way the people he killed had slumped. 

After that, the long drive lying in the back seat of Logan’s car, his mind too addled to understand what he had done and why they were running. Logan wouldn’t tell him. 

Then the countless months spent hiding in Mexico, the days bleeding into each other as his mind slipped further and further away from his grasp. 

He let David see all of it, and when it was done he looked up at his son. Some part of Charles still hoped for forgiveness. For a chance at redemption. 

David met his eyes and vanished in a burst of golden light. 

Charles was alone. 

*

It had been a week and as far as Charles knew, David still hadn’t told anyone. 

For the first few days he kept expecting to enter the kitchen to find the X-Men staring at him in horror, their traitor of a mentor revealed for all to see. But nothing happened. Life at the mansion was as it always was, and David seemed to be in no hurry to make Charles pay for what he’d done. 

Charles had thought about asking Ruth about how David was, but he decided against it. Either David hadn’t told Ruth, or he had and she was keeping the secret. Whichever was the case, he didn’t want to know. 

Then a week had passed, and Charles guessed at what his punishment was to be. 

David wouldn’t tell the X-Men. There would be no public outrage. Professor X would never be revealed as a murderer. No, Charles’ punishment was simple: he was never going to see David again. 

Perhaps David didn’t see it that way. Maybe he’d just decided that he didn’t want a killer for a father. It didn’t matter. Charles had lost his chance at being a parent, and such a thing could not be undone. 

The hurt cut deeper than a knife. He had no real way to put it into words, but as soon as he’d found out about David, Charles had loved him. He had always wanted to be a father, and even when he was far too old for such a thing to be biologically possible, he would sometimes daydream about a young boy or girl with his eyes, quiet and studious like Charles had been at that age. Probably a mutant, but in the dream-world Charles wouldn’t mind if his child was mutant or human. 

Then he had come to this world and the longed-for child wasn’t a fantasy but a reality. A teenager with his own thoughts and opinions, who’d decided that he didn’t want a father like Charles. But that wouldn’t stop Charles from loving him. 

Now that he would never see David again, what could Charles do with all this love? 

He’d already missed so many milestones: he would never hold David as a baby or watch him take his first steps, and now he would miss everything that came after. David’s eighteenth birthday, and every birthday after that. College. Was David even in school? Charles wasn’t likely to find out now. 

And with sweet, kind Ruth there was the possibility of grandchildren someday. Children that would almost certainly be kept as far away from Xavier’s School for the Gifted as possible. 

He’d tried to distract himself with other concerns. After hours of thorough research, he’d found no evidence of the decline in mutant births that had signalled the beginning of the end for his species in his old dimension. It was consoling, but only to an extent. Thinking about mutant children had only led him back to thinking about _his_ mutant child. 

Yesterday, Erik had visited. They’d talked about the situation over a game of chess, which had turned into kisses, which had turned into Charles saying that they really should stop doing this. His resolve had broken when Erik kissed him again. Charles found himself caught between regretting it and wanting to call Erik up so that they could do it all again. 

What would David think if he found out that his father had been kissing a man? 

A knock at the door drew Charles out of his reverie. 

He went to open it without thinking, but by the time his hand was on the door handle, he realised that he couldn’t feel the mind of whoever was waiting to be let in. Sure enough, when he opened the door David Haller stood there. He was visibly exhausted, and he was clearly using every ounce of self-control he possessed not to turn and run. 

“Can I come in? There are… some things that I’d like to say. Things that you’ll want to hear.” His voice was hoarse. 

“Of course.” Charles attempted a smile. Hope. While David was here there was still hope. 

David entered and looked around nervously at Charles’ private living room. It was where Charles should have received him in the first place: it was quieter and more intimate than his office, though with a pang he realised that David had clearly never seen this room before. He gestured at the couch. “Please, sit. Can I get you some tea?” 

David seemed taken aback. “Yeah. Sure. Thanks.” He sat down right on the edge of the couch, not allowing himself to let his guard down even slightly. 

Charles boiled the kettle and tried to appear calm, but it was nearly impossible because David was _right there._ His son, come to visit. 

Then the tea was made and Charles set it on the table. “Do you take sugar?” 

“No.” David took a sip even though it was still far too hot to drink and then set his mug back down on the coffee table. “Look, I’m not good at talking to people who don’t know me. I always end up saying the wrong thing, so instead I’m just going to talk at you, and make the offer I came here to make, and then I’ll probably just leave.” 

Charles didn’t want David to go, but he knew better than to say that out loud. Instead, he said: “Go on.” 

David squared his shoulders, took a breath, and began. “You don’t need to worry about the dementia. 

“A few years ago when I was in the clinic in the Himalayas, Merzah and I worked out that I can heal certain mental illnesses. Not all of them, obviously. No-one can do that. But something degenerative like dementia or Alzheimer’s... Sometimes it took me more than one try, and I wasn’t always having a good day, and they usually got knocked unconscious by it. But the point is that I can get rid of it. I’d enter their minds, put things back the way they should be, and the patient would sleep for a day and then wake up with their brain working fine. And there were plenty of sick telepaths to work with. I got pretty good at it.” 

David took a crumpled post-it note out of his jeans pocket and set it down on the table. There was a phone number written on it. “When you get the first signs, call that number. I’ll turn up and heal you and you can get back to your life.” He took a deep breath. “That’s all I came here to say.” 

Charles was lost for words. When he found what he wanted to say, he knew that his voice would shake when he spoke. “David, that’s… extraordinarily kind of you.” 

David frowned. “That’s not really how I see it. The X-Men think I don’t have a moral code, but they’re wrong. It would be shitty of me not to heal you just because you look like a person who hurt me. And also because… I know what it’s like. You wake up somewhere you don’t recognise, and you don’t know how you got there. The last few days or weeks are a blur, but somehow you know. Even though you can barely link one thought to the next, you still know that you hurt someone. And no-one will tell you what you did. So you’re left in some hospital bed wondering if it was one person or twenty. Whether they died or if they were only injured. And you know that no matter how often they tell you that it wasn’t your fault, you will still hate yourself for whatever it was that you did. If I can prevent someone from having to go through that, then I bloody will.” 

“So that’s why you didn’t tell them,” said Charles. “You could have told the X-Men at any time, ruined my life. But you didn’t.” 

David shrugged. “If personal experience is anything to go by, they would never be able to hate you as much as you already hate yourself. No punishment would be equal to waking up every day and remembering what you did. Also, I doubt they would have believed me. After all, I’m just a crazy guy who has delusions.” 

“I will never be able to thank you enough.” 

“You don’t need to. I mean, I’m just trying to do the right thing. Make the world a better place.” David finished his tea. “I’ll be off now, unless there’s anything else you want us to talk about.” 

“There is one thing.” 

David looked at him like a deer in the headlights. “…Okay.” 

“Scott and Jean came to visit me last week. They didn’t stay long. They quite like Alaska, and they’re thinking of staying up there permanently and starting a family. But while they were here Scott told me that you said you didn’t feel like a member of my family.” 

David wouldn’t meet his eyes. “The other you… he loved me, but at the end of the day, I was always last on his list of priorities. The X-Men would always come first.” 

“You should never have been put in a position where you felt like that.” Charles paused before he continued, in a vain attempt to calm his anxiety. “David… I’m sure you can imagine that in the world I came from there were many things I wish I’d done differently. One of my greatest regrets was that I never had any children. Then I came to this world, and you’re here, and it feels like a gift. So what I’m trying to say is that… I would consider it an honour if you allowed me to be a father to you.” 

David looked as if he’d been slapped. He didn’t speak for a full minute. Long enough for Charles to expect rejection. Instead David looked Charles dead in the eyes and said: “You have to be sure. You have to be sure that this is what you want. I believe that you want a child, but you have to understand that I’m not sane. My mental illness will always be there, and just because I’m better at controlling it now doesn’t mean that there aren’t still good days and bad days and fucking awful days. Being my father would mean being there for all of that. 

“And I won’t always agree with you. And I can be really fucking weird. And my mutations are so powerful that some days even I get scared. And I won’t stop going after bad people, because sometimes a Nazi just needs to be punched. So you have to be sure that you can handle all of that, because I won’t stick around for a father who only wants me when I’m being socially acceptable.” 

“David, I’m certain.” 

David pulled at a spare thread on his jeans. “I used to think that I was a monster. That I didn’t deserve anything good. That I was impossible to love. It’s only in the last few months that things started to change. These days… I think I’m not perfect, but I’m trying. I’m trying to be a good person, and I try to help people. And I’m not a monster. I deserve good things. I deserve to be happy, and spend time with my friends, and spend time with my lover, and have parents who love me unconditionally. So I will do this thing with you, if you can accept me.” 

Charles beamed. 

“But,” David continued, “There will have to be conditions.” 

Charles’ smile faltered. “Yes. Of course. I understand.” 

“I don’t want you to try and read my mind unless I say you’re allowed to. If I don’t want to do something with you then you don’t try and make me. And I’m not going to start calling you ‘father’ or anything like that.” 

“Oh.” Charles tried to pass off the disappointment nonchalantly. “Well, to tell the truth I can’t really imagine you calling me ‘father’. It sounds so formal. Did you really call him that?” 

David shrugged. “‘Father’ to his face, ‘dad’ behind his back.” 

“You could call me ‘dad’ if you like.” He was unable to hide the hope in his voice. 

“No.” David’s tone brooked no argument. 

“Charles, then?” 

“I’ll call you Xavier. That’s the best I can do. Charles was… him.” Pain flashed across David’s face. He hid it quickly behind a neutral expression, but Charles had seen it. 

“But if we go somewhere together, do I get to tell people that you’re my son?” 

“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t be much point in doing the whole father-son thing if we kept it secret.” 

“You know, you could come live with me if you wanted to. You could pick out a room you like and we could decorate it together.” 

“I don’t want to be somewhere I’m not wanted.” David replied quickly. 

“But you are. I – I want you here with me.” 

“You’re not the only person who lives here. Ruth would probably like living with me. Jono and Laura would be okay with it. But the X-Men view me as a threat and the students are all scared of me. I don’t want to live in a place where people will judge me for things about myself that I can’t change.” 

“But you will visit?” Charles asked earnestly. 

“How often would you like to see me?” 

“I want to see you every day.” Perhaps he was being too honest, but David seemed to appreciate it. 

“I can’t do Saturdays. Saturday morning is for the synagogue and Saturday afternoon is for Ruth. Wednesday afternoons I go to therapy and every other Sunday I catch up with mum. But I could do some of the other days.” 

“I’ll make time.” 

“You don’t have to. If you’re busy or there’s X-Men stuff then I get it. It’s fine.” 

Charles leaned forward in his chair. “David. I know we don’t know each other as well as I’d like, and I know that we’re establishing boundaries right now, but I want to make something absolutely clear: I will make time for you. Whenever you need me, I will find time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot happened in this chapter.
> 
> First of all, David is pretty prickly when he’s scared. And seeing this man that is and isn’t his father is freaking him out.
> 
> Second, one of the main parts of David’s character arc in X-Men Legacy was him realising that he deserved to be happy. I wanted to reflect that in this chapter, when David realises that he deserves loving parents, and realises that Charles is willing to provide that for him.
> 
> Also, David is setting up boundaries. He wants to believe that this new version of his father will love him, but he’s been hurt and let down too many times to fully trust Charles. Because of this he’s making sure that if things go wrong he still has places to run.
> 
> I wanted to show David’s power in ordinary ways. The fact that he can drink way-too-hot-to-drink tea without burning himself was one of these things. His powers mean that he can walk through a supernova unscathed. He probably doesn’t even notice that the tea is practically boiling.
> 
> Merzah is a character directly from the comics. He turns up in X-Men Legacy (2012) issue 1.
> 
> One last thing: when Charles told David that having David for a son felt like a gift, David was floored. I couldn’t fully express it in the chapter because it’s from Charles’ perspective, but it had never occurred to David that Charles would want him.


	5. Chapter 5: Charles

When Charles told the X-Men that David would start visiting him regularly, they had baulked. They’d thought they were being reasonable, but the fact remained that most of them clearly viewed David the way airport security guards would view an unattended package making a ticking noise. Normally Charles would try to be diplomatic and find a solution that made everyone feel safe, but on this matter he refused to compromise. 

David had come to the mansion twice already, and had posed a threat to no-one. Charles would be with him at all times; nothing could go wrong. 

What hurt him the most was that the X-Men viewed his desire to see David as out of character; he didn’t like being reminded of his counterpart’s failings as a father. The one consolation was that Charles knew he could do better than that. He could be the kind of father that David deserved. 

They’d settled into a routine. On a day when David was visiting, Charles would put the kettle on, and David would teleport in. Then they would drink tea while Charles asked questions, most of which David would answer. 

David’s favourite colour and favourite foods. The books he liked and the movies he liked and his childhood memories of France. 

Charles hoarded the scraps of information like jewels. 

But always there were restrictions. David wouldn’t tell him where he lived, or give a description of how his powers actually worked or what his split personalities were like. Charles ached that there were things about his son that he wasn’t allowed to know, but he never brought it up with David. 

When David set up conditions for their meetings Charles had recognised the look of someone groping for as much autonomy as he could get. He wasn’t going to complain about the restrictions; after all, his acceptance of the conditions was possibly the only reason why David kept coming back. 

Sometimes, though it pained him, Charles would find himself asking the wrong kind of question. In David’s very first planned visit, Charles had asked him whether he preferred being called David or Legion. David had flinched. 

“Don’t – don’t call me Legion. People only call me that when they want to forget that I’m a person. It makes it easier for them to focus on the fact that I’m a dangerous lunatic who needs to be put down.” 

Charles had dropped the subject, hating himself a little for making David tense up. It wasn’t the only mistake he’d made. 

A combination of autism, powerful touch-telepathy, and years spent being poked at by doctors had left David with a deep aversion to physical contact. Once, Charles had been foolish enough to rest his hand on David’s shoulder, only for David to teleport to the other side of the room, breathing heavily and fighting down a panic attack. 

Even though Charles knew it wasn’t his fault, he still felt responsible. He’d promised himself he’d never hurt David but he’d already failed in that more than once. 

Charles, too, had bad days. Days when all he could think about was the Westchester Incident and the deaths he’d caused. On those days David could tell. He’d fix Charles with a stare and say: “Talk. You can’t talk about it to anyone other than me, and you should talk about it with someone.” 

So Charles would tell David about how Jean and Scott and Ororo and Kurt and Hank and Kitty and Rogue had died, and David would tell him: “It wasn’t your fault.” 

“I should have seen it coming. I’d been getting worse for months. They were my _students._ I was meant to protect them.” 

“I was meant to protect my patients back in the Himalayas. Didn’t stop the blast from ripping them to shreds.” 

“That wasn’t your fault.” 

“If that wasn’t my fault, then the Westchester Incident wasn’t your fault. We’re either both guilty or both innocent, and you’ve decided that I’m not to blame. Don’t be a bloody hypocrite.” 

After that, David had changed the subject. He told Charles how some days he would teleport to the Moon just to watch the Earth rise, and by the time he was done describing it, Charles could almost forgive himself. 

They were drawing closer. Charles still felt lightyears away from where he wanted to be with David, but he could see the strands of their relationship knitting together to form a connection. 

*

It was late in the evening. Late enough that the summer sunlight had begun to fade. The mansion was quiet; Ororo and Logan had taken most of the students on holiday, leaving Charles and Kitty to look after the few children that didn’t want to spend a week by the beach. 

Charles was watering the plant in the corner of his office when the doorbell rang. A cursory telepathic sweep revealed two minds. One was young, excited, and a little intimidated. The other was recognisable only by it impenetrability: David. 

When he opened the door he had a small shock, which he kept well out of his expression. Decades of being headmaster at a school for mutants had raised his tolerance for the unusual. 

David was shirtless. He’d given his t-shirt to a girl beside him, who wore nothing else. Her skin was grass green, armoured like an insect, and her eyes were a luminous red. She was perhaps fifteen. At Charles’ glance she tugged the hem of the shirt lower. Luckily for her David preferred loose clothing, and the t-shirt did a passable job at covering her modesty. Her skin was smudged with some kind of black dust. 

“I’ve a new student for you, Xavier.” said David. “This is Alice. She controls insects.” 

Charles detected the shake in his voice. _Are you alright?_ Contacting David telepathically always felt like talking to a wall, even though he knew his son could hear him. 

_Help her first,_ David replied. 

Charles turned to Alice and put on a smile. “Welcome to the school for the gifted.” 

*

Alice hadn’t been born looking like a mutant. Her powers had come two months previously, and with them, her transformation. Her parents had locked her in the cellar, determined to hide what their daughter had become. 

But there are plenty of beetles in the earth, and there were certainly enough to dig a short tunnel that led from the cellar to the garden, and after that Alice had run without looking back. David had found her living out of an abandoned coal mine, and offered her a more comfortable place to sleep. 

She told Charles all of this while he found her new clothes and showed her to a spare room. After she went to take a shower, Charles had gone in search of David. 

He found him sitting cross-legged on the terrace, looking up at the sky, though he stood when he sensed Charles behind him. Charles passed him a spare t-shirt, and part of him took a moment to admire the sheer _rightness_ of David wearing the school logo. 

Once he had pulled on the shirt, David rested his hands on the terrace balustrade. The sun was fully setting now, and David’s profile was silhouetted against the orange light. In moments like these it was clear how much he resembled Charles. They even had the same frown. 

“When I was a kid,” David began, “Before everything went wrong, Daniel used to take me up to the roof of the embassy on clear nights. We’d stargaze. He taught me the names of all the constellations. I guess that’s why being under the open sky usually makes me feel safe.” He glanced at Charles. “It isn’t helping right now.” 

“What’s wrong?” 

David stared at his feet. “I can’t teleport. I managed it to get to Alice, but we had to hitchhike to get here. Luckily I’m quite persuasive.” 

Being with David always felt like dealing with several unknown factors at the same time, but for once Charles was on familiar ground. “If there’s something wrong with your powers, I’m sure we can find a solution.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with my powers, Xavier. It’s just how they are. They aren’t consistent. So today I don’t have teleportation, which means that I’m stuck here. And explaining why my powers work the way they do would require… trust.” 

“But if you told me, then perhaps we could work out a solution together?” 

David closed his eyes for a moment and took some deep, slow breaths. “You know, despite what the X-Men choose to think, in some ways you aren’t like father at all. You don’t judge me, and you don’t try to control me. But before I tell you this, I need you to promise that you won’t use the information against me. I might not have perfect control over my powers, but compared to how I was even six months ago, it is fucking stellar. I can’t risk jeopardising that stability.” 

“David, I would never hurt you. I promise.” 

David turned so that his back was to the balustrade, sat, hugged his knees. He looked up at Charles with his blue-and-green eyes. “The way I got control of my powers and my personalities is that… I didn’t. I ended up in a situation where the alternative was dying, so we made a deal. No more fighting with the alters for control of my body. If they want to experience the outside world they can merge with my consciousness, and in return I get the powers they’re connected to. If they don’t, they can just hang around in my mind as long as they don’t bother me. And if I’m in a situation where my life is at threat then I get to take whatever powers I need from them to ensure our survival. 

“But they’re still tied to my emotions in a big way. I’m freaking out right now, so they’re freaking out, so none of the teleporters or space-folders want to share. I’m not in any danger, so I can’t force them. Which means I’m stuck here until I feel better, because I can’t exactly catch a taxi to where I live.” 

“If there’s something wrong,” Charles said gently, “Then I’d like to help, if I can.” 

“I’m worried about Alice. She isn’t in any kind of danger, but I’m still fucking terrified about her safety.” 

“You know how good the mansion’s security system is. She’ll be safe here.” Charles paused. “But why her? Why not someone else who lives here? Ruth is on holiday right now, but–” 

“Ruth is a badass who can handle herself,” David interrupted. “But now I’m guessing that no-one ever told you what happened to the last kid I left with the X-Men.” 

“Honestly, I thought Alice was the first.” 

David shook his head, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse. “Sometimes I see the future. Right after father died, I had a vision. These two mutant kids in Japan: Sojobo and Karasu.” Charles knew Karasu. She was a young telepath at the school, very quiet, but possessed of a deep, burning anger, the cause of which he’d never been able to uncover. He hadn’t heard anything about her having a brother. “They were living on the streets when a gang took them in. Food and shelter in return for having to use their powers to torture and kill. They were eleven years old and they didn’t think they had any way out. So I did what I thought father would have done. I rescued them. Blew up a building to do it, but it was worth it to get them out. 

“And then the X-Men arrived. We fought, I won. But halfway through the fight I realised that there would always be people gunning for the son of Charles Xavier, so I left the kids with the X-Men. I figured they would be fine, get an education, whatever.” David closed his eyes for a moment before he went on. “Sojobo died within the week. He died because a racist prick found out that I cared about a couple of telepath kids, and decide to hurt me by killing Sojobo. The X-Men didn’t realise he was in danger until he was already dead. Now Karasu has to grow up without her twin. She says she doesn’t hate me anymore. Says she understands that it wasn’t my fault. Not that it will ever make me feel any better.” 

“I am so terribly sorry.” Charles wanted nothing more than to pull David into his arms. To hold him and comfort him. At the same time he knew that it was the last thing David wanted. Words would have to suffice. “She’s right, you know. It really wasn’t your fault.” 

“I should have known. There is no point in being as powerful as I am if I can’t save a fucking kid. I’m terrified that something similar will happen with Alice. I can’t have another death like that on my conscience. And until I can get my shit together about this, I won’t be able to teleport.” Abruptly, David stood. “I think my mattress and my blanket are still in the shed. I won’t bother anyone.” 

“Absolutely not.” David drew back, and Charles realised how loudly he had spoken. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. But we… you aren’t going to sleep in the shed, David.” 

“It’s where I always stay if I need to lay low in Westchester. Nobody ever goes in there.” 

“There are two dozen spare bedrooms in the mansion!” 

“If they find out I spent the night in there, I will get yelled at by literally every single one of the X-Men. Like I said before: you might want me here, but they don’t.” 

Charles sighed. “When I founded the school, I did so on the principle that any mutant would have a place here if they needed it. If my own son can’t spend the night then it means that I failed. I know I can’t force you to sleep in the house, but I am going to prepare a room for you. It’s up to you if you use it or not. If anyone objects, they will have to take it up with me.” 

He turned and went inside, hoping that the gamble would pay off. David hated being told what to do, but if he was given a choice… 

The door opened and shut behind him. 

“As long as I don’t have to share a room with someone,” said David, “I don’t really mind where you put me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comics, hitch-hiking is David’s go-to method of transportation when he can’t teleport.
> 
> Alice isn’t actually an OC. She appears in the A-Force comics, and I barely had to tweak her origin story to get her to fit in with the X-Men Universe.
> 
> David has a habit of being protective over mutant kids in the comics. In X-Men Legacy, it’s the telepathic twins Sojobo and Karasu and also a boy named Santi. Sojobo was killed by Ruth Aldine’s abusive older brother, Luca.
> 
> Also, in the comics David really does stay in the shed when he needs to hide out in Westchester. He isn’t exactly welcome in the house.


	6. Chapter 6: Charles

When Charles woke, he did his customary check of the minds in the mansion. It was something he’d done for years to make sure that nothing bad had happened in the night. David was still there, his mind fully shielded even in sleep. Charles would love to be able to read his mind one day, but at least the strength of David’s shields meant that no telepath would be able to harm him. It was one less thing for Charles to worry about. 

He hoped that David liked the room Charles had picked out for him. It wasn’t particularly big, which had been a deliberate choice – David would probably have rejected some of the finer rooms – but it was comfortable and a little out of the way of the other bedrooms. 

He had wanted to eat breakfast with David, but by the time he had explained to a shaken Kitty Pryde that David would be staying over for at least the next few days, David had already dressed and eaten. 

After breakfast Charles found him out on the terrace again. Open sky. David must have loved the Himalayas, with the sky stretching between the mountains. 

“So I talked to Ruth this morning,” said David, “And I guess I feel a bit better. But apparently it’s not enough.” 

The selfish part of Charles said that the longer David couldn’t teleport, the longer he would have to stay at the mansion. He pushed that thought out of his mind, scolding himself. “That’s alright. You know you can stay as long as you want.” Charles paused. “Ruth’s a nice girl.” 

“Okay, before you get any further, I’ve had the sex talk from two different therapists and also Moira MacTaggert.” 

“No, that’s not what I – I just mean that she’s very sweet. For what it’s worth, I approve.” 

David grinned proudly. “You fell for it too.” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“Everyone does. The whole stammer and no eyes and doing homework on time thing. Everyone thinks she’s one of those people who are really quiet and a total pushover. They all underestimate her, even though she’s almost as powerful as I am.” 

Admittedly, Charles had assumed that Ruth’s abilities were mid-level, but he had no reason to doubt the truth of David’s words, which meant that Ruth must be one of the strongest mutants in the mansion. 

David caught the thought from Charles’ mind, and went on, “Exactly. Even mutants have their own prejudices. Give them a blind girl with a speech defect, and most would label her unexceptional. It’s the same reason that they think we’re only together because I’m too crazy to understand what love actually is, and Ruth’s so desperate that she’d go for anybody.” 

“I did wonder, when you died, if you did it to save the world or just to save her.” 

“Can’t it be both?” David flushed and ran his hand through his hair. “Look, can we change the subject or something? I don’t really talk about my relationship much.” 

“All right. Do you know what you’ll do while you’re staying here?” 

“No fucking idea. Which is not good, because I make bad decisions when I’m bored.” 

“Well,” said Charles, unsure about how David would react to the idea he’d just had, “We could always train.” 

David slumped. “I… Xavier, you have to understand, I don’t have a hundredth of my powers right now. The alters don’t want to play.” 

“You have your telepathy.” 

“Yeah. I guess I do.” David seemed to brighten. “Okay then. Just remember: you can shatter my walls, but you’re not allowed to look inside.” 

“Of course.” 

They went up to Charles’ living room. Charles asked David to sit on the couch: if his son got knocked out by accident, Charles wanted him to have a soft landing. 

And then they began. 

It wasn’t a proper fight. It was sparring. At first they tested each other with light jabs of psychic energy, which developed into a back-and-forth of stronger blasts. 

Charles was fascinated. On the psychic plane, every telepath had a psychic form. Charles opted for something which looked exactly like himself, but heavily protected in silver armour. In contrast, David wasn’t presenting his psychic form at all. Instead Charles faced a wall made out of white bricks which stretched off as far as the eye could see. He knew that David’s form must be somewhere behind it, but that just left the mystery of how David presented himself in his mind’s eye. 

After a few more experimental jabs, Charles decided to hit David with something stronger. Enough to send him reeling, but not enough to wound. He gathered the strike, and let loose – 

only for the energy to disperse over David’s shield like a wave against a sea wall. 

“Stop,” said Charles in the real world, and David obediently ceased his attacks. “Why didn’t you say that you were stronger than me?” 

Uncomfortable, David looked down at his shoes. “I didn’t know if I was or not. Though I guess we know the answer now. I mean, I spent most of that fight trying to avoid ripping you to shreds by accident.” 

“If you figured out that you’re this powerful, why didn’t you ask to stop? There’s nothing to learn from defeating someone who’s weaker than yourself.” 

David’s jaw clenched. “When it comes to telepathy, power only gets you so far. This past year every telepath I’ve gone up against has been weaker than me, but plenty of them have been better at fighting. Because they all had training. They knew all these tricks to breaking into a person’s mind, and I barely know any techniques. No-one’s ever taught me how to use my powers properly. All anyone ever did was try and get me to control them, not use them. But I need training. If I’m fighting someone on the psychic plane, I won’t want to kill them, I’ll want to stop them. And right now, I don’t have many other options aside from brute force.” 

Charles felt a certain degree of pride at David’s abilities, given that he’d had barely any training. The boy was practically a prodigy and he didn’t even know it. “We can cover that. There’s plenty I could teach you.” 

“I’d like that.” 

He tried to avoid looking too pleased at the prospect of training David. “Nothing more today, I think. I’m a little tired after that sparring. Let’s have some tea.” 

“You keep making me tea. I’m beginning to think that it’s not just hospitality. It means something to you.” 

He hadn’t expected that question. David could be astonishingly perceptive at times. Charles found himself caught between wanting to tell David everything and wanting to conceal the things he didn’t want David to see. He tried to find some middle ground. “I suppose it’s because my parents… my father died young, and my mother wouldn’t do anything for me if she thought the maid could do it instead. I’m trying to be better than them, in the small ways.” 

“How old were you?” asked David, softly, “When he died, I mean.” 

“About eight, I think.” 

“It’s hard.” 

Compared to David, Charles knew that he had been lucky. Losing his father was nothing more than a telephone call about a laboratory accident. When Daniel died, David had been younger and he’d had to watch. When the other Charles Xavier died, David had felt it happen. 

“I’m sorry,” David added. “I was just curious. Father never talked about his parents.” 

Charles supposed that he could tell David about the Markos: his cold, controlling stepfather and his cruel, thuggish stepbrother, but he found himself holding back. He supposed that it was pride. He deeply wanted David to be able to look up to him. It wouldn’t be easy for David to think of Charles as strong if he found out about the ways that Charles’ stepfamily had hurt him, both mental and physical. “It was years ago. It doesn’t matter.” 

“Xavier, I’m an empath. Lying to me about your feelings doesn’t really work.” 

David had been right about the feelings, but wrong about the cause. “Losing parents is never easy. But my father wanted me to be a scientist, so I know he’d be proud of that. Whether he’d approve of my turning the family home into a school for mutants and running a vigilante group out of the basement… Well, I think he’d be rather scandalised.” 

“He definitely wouldn’t have approved of you having an illegitimate son.” 

“Certainly not. It makes me feel quite rebellious.” 

Then David laughed. Not particularly loudly or for very long, but for Charles it was like seeing sunlight for the first time. He was caught up in the way David’s hair tumbled, the exact shape of his smile. 

_Did I really do that?_ thought Charles. _Did I really make that happen?_

*

The next few days followed a steady routine. David would eat breakfast with Charles, followed by training. David would then spend the afternoon curled up with a book, usually science fiction or fantasy. 

On the fourth morning something was different. David wasn’t there for breakfast, nor did he leave his room in the hours after that. By 11am Charles decided to knock on David’s door. It creaked open by way of a reply. 

The lights were off but the morning sun through the gap in the curtains meant that the room was dim rather than dark. David was curled up in bed, facing the wall. 

“Is today a bad day?” asked Charles quietly. 

“Yeah.” David mumbled. “It’s Wednesday. I should be going to therapy today. But I can’t go because I still can’t fucking teleport. And getting out of bed should not be this bloody hard.” 

For Charles it wasn’t even a decision. “I’ll drive you.” 

David shook his head against the pillows. “Her office is too far away. I think I’ll just… lie here.” 

“It’s nearly midday. You should eat something, I’ll go make you a sandwich.” 

David turned around to look at Charles. “Y’know, when I said you had to be there for me on my bad days, I didn’t actually expect you to follow through.” 

“Then why ask at all?” 

“Because if I asked for everything that I wanted, I thought I might end up getting some of it. Like, maybe a third? A half if you were really serious about the parenting thing? The fact that you’re going for all of it is… pretty surprising.” He paused, then went on. “If you told a random ninety-year-old man that he had a mentally unstable son, he’d just ignore the kid.” 

“Maybe I think you’re worth paying attention to.” 

“Huh.” He sat up. “I don’t hear that very often.” 

“And don’t think I didn’t notice what you did with Alice yesterday afternoon, out on the terrace. You were training her.” The two mutants had sat facing each other with a beetle between them, each trying to get it to walk towards them and away from the other person. David had clearly been going easy on Alice. 

David shrugged. “She asked for some help with her control.” 

“I didn’t know you had animal telepathy. I couldn’t do it until I was in my fifties. Your telepathy is incredible for someone your age.” 

“I kind of always knew I was an outlier. Father once said I had godlike power and childlike control.” 

“He was wrong. About your control.” 

“I don’t know. Have you ever seen an eleven-year-old in a straightjacket? I was pretty dangerous back then. And with animal telepathy… I guess it never occurred to me that it would be much different from controlling a human’s mind. It kept me fed while I was on the streets. Nobody goes looking for a thief if a pigeon grabs a bag of food out of their hand.” 

Again the shame twisted in Charles’ chest. “How long were you homeless for?” 

“Just over a month. The streets aren’t kind to mutants, but it’s easier if you’re a telepath. You can just make people leave you alone. Eventually I managed to scrape enough money together to start staying in hotels.” 

Charles had read his will. It had included a sum of money set aside for David to be cared for, but nothing that David could actually use himself. Any money David had would have been earned or stolen. Either way, he didn’t want to know what David had been forced to do just to afford a place to sleep. 

“You deserved better.” 

“I didn’t know that then, but I do know it now. These days I have a nice little cabin in the middle of nowhere.” 

*

David barely touched the sandwich. In the end he set the plate down on the bedside table and said, “I’m too anxious to eat. Which is not usually something I have a problem with, but I’m still stuck in this rut about Alice.” 

“It’s understandable for you to be concerned for her safety. However, I think it’s important that you understand that you might always be worried about her. God knows I worry about the students all the time. When they’re at school. After they graduate. I… also worry about you a fair bit.” 

David shot him a look. “Shit, Xavier, I am practically indestructible. You don’t need to worry about me.” 

“But you _aren’t._ You died barely four months ago, and the… the idea that one day it might happen again terrifies me. When Ruth first talked to me about you she said that when you’re upset you do reckless things, and all I could think about was that you’d go and put yourself in danger because you’d heard about me. If you got hurt it would be my fault.” 

“My therapist says I have self-destructive tendencies. I think she’s probably right. I’m not going to stop trying to save people’s lives just because I might get hurt, but I am doing my best to check if I’m doing something unnecessarily dangerous. I can’t really give you much more comfort than that.” 

*

David managed to eat a little more, and he went back to sleep in the late afternoon. The next morning he was awake early, sitting on the terrace as dawn broke. 

It was a perfect summer day. A slight breeze meant that the air was closer to warm than hot; the sky wasn’t marred by a single cloud. 

Charles made his way down to join him. “The grounds are quite pretty in the summer, aren’t they?” 

David was looking out across the lake. “It’s beautiful here.” 

“I wish you could stay here,” Charles said softly. “I know that you can’t, but I wish that you could. I wish that I’d come to this world earlier, before so many people had hurt you. I – I suppose I wish for a lot of things.” _I wish that I could have raised you._ Charles didn’t have the strength to say it. 

“I think I would have liked that,” David whispered. He shook himself and attempted a smile, trying to lighten the mood. “I got my teleportation back this morning. So… would you tell Alice I said goodbye?” 

“You could wait for her to wake up and tell her yourself.” 

David shook his head. “Making friends with me would ruin her chance at having a social life here. People would avoid her if they found out.” 

“Are you going to bring any more new students? The school year hasn’t started yet.” 

“Maybe. Depends where I’m needed.” He paused. “Probably.” 

“I’ll tell the X-Men that they can expect you to drop students off from time to time.” 

“You don’t have to do that. I can just send the kiddies to knock on the door. Really, the X-Men don’t need to know.” 

“I’d like to tell them.” Charles smiled. “You must allow me to be a proud parent sometimes.” 

David blinked, and suddenly his eyes were shining pure white light. 

Charles realised that he was afraid. “David?” No response. “David, your eyes are glowing.” 

David blinked again, and his eyes returned to normal. “Sorry.” He wiped away a tear. “Sorry. It happens sometimes when the alters want to share. I can’t always control when they do that.” 

“It’s alright.” Once again Charles felt the impulse to hug David, and he pushed it down. “Oh David, please don’t cry.” 

“Father knew me eleven years,” David said. “Eleven years. He told me that he was proud of me exactly once. You’ve known me barely two months and you say it like it’s nothing. I mean, I barely did anything at all. I – I need a minute.” 

Charles let David cry himself out, wishing that he could do more than just sit there. 

Once he’d calmed down a little, David wiped his eyes. “I think I’ll go now. I mean, I only stuck around this long to say goodbye to you.” 

“You could stay a little longer if you like.” 

David shook his head. “No. I need a rest. Keeping my mind completely telepathically hidden feels kind of horrible after a while.” 

Charles knew that David wouldn’t drop his shields around him, so all he could do was watch David go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on David’s behaviour: Twice now, characters have talked about how David has a habit of putting himself in danger when he’s having a bad mental health day. He hasn’t done so in this fic. This is because he’d seeing a therapist and is able to recognise his self-destructive habits, and avoid them.
> 
> When I wrote this fic, I wanted to make sure that David didn’t come across as over-powered, which isn’t easy because he’s literally all-powerful. Here, David has a bad day. His main weakness is bad mental health.
> 
> The reason why David doesn’t reveal his psychic form to Charles is because it’s weird as hell. Look up X-men Legacy (2012-2014) Issue 20 if you don’t believe me. It is also implied in the comics that David doesn't have much control over how his psychic form appears.
> 
> I’d say that Charles is definitely placing David on a bit of a pedestal. David isn’t perfect, and Charles is aware of that, but at the same time, Charles has never had a child before, so he’s still full of emotion about that.
> 
> I think Charles might open up to David about the Markos’ abuse one day, but not during this fic. On that day, David is going to get into a very public fistfight with the Juggernaut, and David is going to win.


	7. Chapter 7: Charles

In the past few months, Charles hadn’t seen Hank very often. He’d been working at a lab in the city, so he didn’t have much time for visiting Westchester. Because of this, Charles was thoroughly surprised when he stormed into Charles’ office, despite the fact that he’d sensed Hank coming. 

The door slammed behind him, and he stood there with a file tucked under one arm. “Tell me that it isn’t true,” he snapped. 

Charles kept his voice calm. “Hank. How about you sit down, and tell me what this is about?” 

Hank collapsed into the chair opposite Charles. “Is it, or is it not true that Legion spent the night here?” 

“He prefers to be called David. And yes, he did stay for a few nights last month.” 

“Did you sleep?” 

“What, when?” 

“When Legion stayed over. Did. You. Sleep?” 

Charles sighed. “Of course I did, Hank. What did you expect, that I sit outside his room and keep watch?” 

From Hank’s expression, Charles realised that it was exactly what Hank had expected. “Are you out of your mind? When you said you were going to start seeing him, I bit my tongue. I figured you’d keep an eye on him while he was here – I mean, he always did have a soft spot for you.” 

“Of course he does, I’m his father–” 

“But staying the night! And you _slept!_ Do you have any idea what could have happened? He could have killed a student, all while you were lying peacefully in your bed.” 

“David would _never_ –” 

“Never? He’s already killed. You weren’t in the Himalayas, you didn’t see the bodies…” 

“Actually,” said Charles softly, “I did. David showed me.” 

Hank was taken aback. “Why the hell would he show you? And you still agreed to see him after that? Are you crazier than he is? Perhaps you could talk me through your thought process, Charles, because I honestly don’t understand it.” 

“I thought,” replied Charles, “That he’s a deeply traumatised young man who’s doing his best to live with his condition. And I’d appreciate it if you stopped making offhand comments about how ‘crazy’ he is.” 

“Are you kidding me? He self-identifies as insane–” 

“You don’t exactly have the moral high ground here, Hank. David told me what happened in Japan. I looked through the mission reports. He asked you to leave him alone, and you ordered the X-Men to attack. You were so focused on taking David in that a child died in your care.” 

Hank paled under his fur. “The boy? That – that was unfortunate, and I wish that we could have saved him…” 

“You don’t even remember his name, do you? David does. It was Sojobo; he was eleven. He died painfully, brutally, and you didn’t notice because you wanted to win a fight against a boy who’d just felt his father die. You did something I didn’t think possible. You made me ashamed of you.” 

Hank took a deep breath in a clear attempt to change the subject. “Well, either way, we don’t have to worry about Legion hurting anyone else.” He passed the file to Charles. “I started designing this as soon as I heard that you let him stay the night. I’ll need you to give me funding to run lab tests before it’s properly used.” 

Charles flicked through the file. It described a formula for a serum, designed to induce a coma. 

“I figured,” Hank continued, “If he does something, hurts someone, we can knock him out. It’s a more sophisticated version of the drugs we used last time he needed to be contained.” 

Charles’ felt as if he’d swallowed ice. He knew he had to reply to Hank, but all he could think about was David. David, frowning over a book. David, the only time Charles had ever seen him laugh. David, weeping over his dead mentor, hating himself. David, who could be angry and desperate and thoughtful and loving. Imperfect, but Charles knew that given the choice he wouldn’t change a thing. 

He thought about all of that, and then he pictured David, lying limp while Hank’s serum flooded his veins. His mind falling quiet before Charles ever had a chance to read it. 

As a rule, Charles tried to avoid anger. He preferred to keep himself calm, but now he felt something rising within him. The most serene fury he’d ever felt. _Don’t you dare touch my child._

“No.” He uttered the single syllable so quietly that Hank barely heard it. 

“What do you mean? He’d dangerous. We need a plan if he starts hurting people.” 

“He won’t, Hank. I know that. If you’d ever had a conversation with him then you would too. I refuse to prioritise your paranoia over the freedom of the only child I’ll ever have.” 

“I’m not paranoid. You must realise how powerful he is. If it came to a fight, we might not win. With my serum, we could put it in a dart and he’d fall asleep before he even felt it.” 

“And what should I tell him when he wakes up? That I don’t trust him, that I think he should be put back into a coma? What about Gabrielle? How would I explain to her what I’ve done to our son? No, Hank. Never.” 

Charles took a moment to collect himself before he continued. “Here is what you’re going to do. You’re going to let me keep this file, and then you’re going to destroy every single document in your possession that involves plans for this… poison. We’ve been friends a long time, Hank. I don’t want to ruin anything, but if you hurt my son I don’t know what I’ll do to you.” 

“So you won’t do anything? How many people does Legion have to kill before you realise that we need a way of containing him?” 

“His name is David. You’d do well to remember that. Now get out of my office and stay away from my son.” 

When Hank was gone Charles fed the file into the shredder, page by page. 

*

He texted David, asking if he could come to the mansion whenever it was convenient. 

Half an hour later David teleported into the office and sat opposite Charles. “Did something happen, Xavier? You seem a little on edge.” 

Apparently Charles wasn’t concealing his surface thoughts as well as he thought he was. “Yes. I’m afraid this is going to upset you, but I think you have a right to know.” Charles paused, wondering how he could do this without distressing David and coming up with nothing. “Earlier today, Hank McCoy visited me with plans for a more advanced version of the serum that was used to keep you in a coma when you were younger.” 

David went white as a sheet. His mental shield flickered, and Charles caught a glimpse of a memory. David, thirteen years old, strapped to a hospital bed. The drugs flooding his system would send him to sleep soon, but not before he caught a snatch of conversation between his parents. 

_Gabrielle’s voice: “Do you think he’ll ever be cured?”_

_Charles’s voice: “No. But I hope so.”_

As quickly as it had appeared, the memory vanished. David had shrunk back in his seat, his eyes burning white. 

Charles remembered too late how David’s alters would share all their abilities if David’s life was in danger. The way his eyes glowed when his personalities were most present within him. 

David thought Charles was a threat. 

“I didn’t mean for you to see that memory,” David said quietly, carefully enunciating every word. “Perhaps in return you’ll tell me what you plan to do with the serum.” 

Charles raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Nothing. I told Hank I wouldn’t let him make it; I wouldn’t betray your trust like that. You can read my mind if you need proof.” He dropped his shields and felt David sifting through his recent memories. Fear was making David’s telepathy clumsy. 

Once David had finished, his eyes faded back to normal. “You might change your mind,” he said. “If I do something wrong you might wish you had that serum.” 

Charles wheeled himself around his desk until he was next to David. “I believe you when you say that you’re stable now. Even if something did happen, I’d find another way. What Hank proposed… I could never do that to you.” 

Slowly, silently, David started to cry. “Of course you wouldn’t. The other you – he would have. He would have had McCoy make the serum, and at the first sign of me messing up he would have put me under and called it mercy.” David glanced up at Charles, then his gaze flicked back down to stare at the floor. “Do you think McCoy will get funding from anyone else?” 

“All that money to contain one mutant? I doubt it. You’re safe.” 

David wiped his eyes and started to properly sob. “A coma – I can’t do that again, I can’t live through that again.” 

“David,” asked Charles, “May I put my arm around you?” 

David nodded wordlessly, and Charles wrapped an arm around David’s shoulders. He had expected a flinch, but instead David turned and hugged Charles back, clinging to him as he continued to weep. “Dad, I’m scared,” whispered David. “I’m scared that I’ll screw up and you won’t want me anymore.” 

David’s mental defences faded a little. His mind was still shielded, but the impenetrable wall was gone. Charles could hear slips of surface thoughts, as well as quieter murmurs that must be coming from David’s alters. He pulled David closer, well aware that soon he would be crying too. “It’s alright. It’ll be alright. You don’t owe me anything.” What he didn’t say was: _You called me ‘dad’._

“People think I do. It’s why they don’t like me. Sure, some of it is just prejudice, but part of it is because they have an idea of what Charles Xavier’s son should be like, and I don’t match up to that. I never will.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

David pulled away, eyes red and raw. “It’s okay. I’m used to it, really. I don’t need people to like me.” 

Charles smiled sadly. “That was a very poor lie.” 

“Yeah, but it was worth a shot.” 

Charles hesitated a moment, then took one of David’s hands in both of his. “Lately I’ve been thinking… I know that, as much as I want you to, you can’t come and live with me. However, Gabrielle mentioned that you were going to stay with her for Hannukah, and I wondered if we could do something similar.” From David’s surface thoughts, Charles could tell that his son was at least considering it. “Not in the mansion,” Charles added, “We could go somewhere together, book ourselves into a hotel. Be tourists for a week.” 

“Paris,” David breathed. “I want to go back to Paris.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comics, Hank’s attitude towards David is basically “I acknowledge that he’s mentally ill, but let’s beat him up anyway.” Hank is also overly paranoid, even in the films. He built a war plane because apparently that’s “preparing for the worst”.
> 
> And yeah, David’s started calling Charles ‘dad’. By this stage, he’s realised that Charles genuinely wants to protect him, and Charles has earned his love and respect.
> 
> The thing about autistic people is that we generally only want to be touched by people we know well. Charles has been holding back until now because he knows that David doesn’t feel comfortable enough for Charles to touch him, and even when he feels like he should be offering David a shoulder to cry on, Charles asks permission first.


	8. Epilogue

A soft rain was falling, and all over Paris people were picking up their umbrellas and pulling on their coats. 

Everyone except for two people, who were completely untouched by the damp. 

The man looked to be in his sixties and used a wheelchair. 

The boy had long black hair and was in the latter part of his teenage years. 

Anyone watching would be able to see the resemblance between them – a grandfather and his grandson, perhaps. Not that there was anyone around to see them. The streets were strangely clear for a Saturday morning in one of Europe’s capitals. 

They were dressed similarly, but not identically. The man wore a dark blue three-piece suit, and the boy wore a two-piece suit in a darker shade of blue. The boy had clearly never worn a suit before; he hadn’t yet realised that he could pull it off. 

Neither of them was in a hurry. There was no deadline for what they were about to do. As they made their way through the streets the only sound was the boy’s even footsteps. They weren’t talking out loud, but they were communicating. 

Eventually they came to it; a Jewish cemetery. The gate opened without either of them laying a hand on it, and the pair entered. 

It took a few minutes for them to find the grave. They stared at it together for some time. The boy’s father knew that he wouldn’t be the first to speak. 

“I didn’t go to the funeral,” said David. “After what happened… I was catatonic for months. Even once I’d woken up I wouldn’t say a word. And when I started speaking again, no-one really understood why I was unhappy. They thought it was grief, but all I could think about was that I had been able to save myself, but not him.” 

“I don’t believe that Daniel would have wanted you to blame yourself.” 

David closed his eyes against the morning light as he breathed in the petrichor. “I didn’t go to father’s funeral either. Didn’t even mourn properly. I should have been sitting Shiva, but instead I was running around the mountains, crying in caves and trying to stop the alters from taking me over.” 

Charles could say nothing to that. 

After another stretch of silence, David said: “Did you know that I can raise the dead?” 

“What?” Charles winced at how incredulous he sounded. It was hardly the respectful tone he should use for talking over a grave. 

“Not properly. I can reanimate the bodies, even do a little imitation of what the person used to be like if the brain is intact, but it isn’t true resurrection. So I can’t tell Daniel that I’m sorry. I can’t tell father that I’m sorry. If I had a better grip on my powers, I might have been able to save both of them.” 

Charles laid a gentle hand on David’s arm. “None of it was your fault.” 

David swallowed and fought back the tears. “You would have liked Daniel. You would have liked each other a lot. He was human, but when my powers came he thought it was amazing.” 

“I know that you can’t bring him back,” said Charles, “But if you could, even for only a moment, I know what I would say to him. I’d tell him about everything he’d missed from you growing up–” 

“Only the good things?” Charles felt the guilt flash through David’s surface thoughts like a lightning bolt on a clear day. 

Charles smiled sadly. “There are plenty of good things. And then I’d promise him that I’m going to look after you. I’d tell him that he doesn’t need to worry about his son because I know that you’re going to be all right.” 

“Honestly, dad, I think I might actually believe you.” 

They each took one more look at the gravestone, before leaving the graveyard and setting off along the quiet city streets. 

The rain was easing off. It was going to be a beautiful day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comics, David never gets closure for the trauma surrounding Daniel’s death, which does frustrate me. Daniel’s death is never even mentioned apart from the fact that it caused David to develop multiple personalities. I wanted to address that in this fic; Daniel dying was a life-changing traumatic event, and also the first time David lost a father figure (but not the last. After that there was Merzah and this dimension’s original Charles Xavier.).
> 
> Daniel and Charles really would have been friends. In the comics they were friends at university, and afterwards Charles visited the clinic Daniel ran so that they could catch up and share news.
> 
> David's ability to reanimate corpses comes from his alter Styx, who features in the Legion Quest comics.
> 
> I also decided to put David in a suit. As far as I can tell, in the comics David wears a suit exactly twice, and only once in the real world (the other time, it’s on the psychic plane when he’s dancing with Ruth). He seems to favour dark blue, just like his father. Furthermore, David has a very small number of people in his life that he genuinely respects: Ruth, his mother, the version of Charles we see in this fic, and not many others. I wanted to show his respect for Daniel by putting him in the suit. It’s not an exact copy of Charles’ suit, though: after all, David is his own person. It also implies that David let Charles take him to a tailor’s. A father-son day trip.
> 
> I got the idea for this fic from three things:
> 
> 1\. I was thinking about how movieverse Charles Xavier has a lot of fatherhood potential (especially the Patrick Stewart version, but also McAvoy in XMA), but David doesn’t exist in the X-Men movieverse. Meanwhile in the comics you have David, desperate for the approval of a father figure but with a father who was absent and subjected him to traumatic medical procedures in an attempt to ‘cure’ him, and then David’s father dies, leaving David with a bunch of unresolved PTSD. I wanted ‘would-be-a-good-dad-but-has-no-kids’ movieverse Charles Xavier to meet ‘really-wants-a-dad-but-would-never-admit-to-it’ comicverse David.
> 
> 2\. I wanted Charles to have a happier ending that the one he got in Logan, and I thought David would be able to relate to Charles’ mental health issues in that movie.
> 
> 3\. I had been listening to the song Dear Theodosia for 3 days straight and I was having FEELINGS.


	9. Chapter 4.5: Cherik Deleted Scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place halfway through Chapter 4. Tragically, I had to cut it for the sake of the plot, but I have lovingly placed it here for any Cherik shippers that might want to read it.

A knock at the window drew Charles out of his thoughts, and he set his copy of the Once and Future King down on a side table. 

The mind outside the window was both achingly familiar and terrifyingly unknown. As Charles pushed himself over to the window he kept reminding himself that no matter how close they’d been in his world, this world’s Erik was a stranger to him. 

He looked out at the man who hovered a few feet on the other side of the glass and his heart twisted in his chest. Knowing that it was probably a bad decision, he slid the bolt aside and pulled the window open. Cool evening air rushed to meet him, and he drew back so that Erik had enough space to climb inside. Charles didn’t dare read his mind. 

Once he was in the room with Charles, Erik waved a hand and the window shut itself. He looked down at Charles with deep affection in his mind. 

“Charles.” 

God, he’d missed that voice. “Erik.” 

“If what they say is true, we’ve technically never met before.” 

“Yes, I suppose that we really haven’t.” 

“In that case, I must say that it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Erik reached out and shook Charles’ hand. Both their hands were shaking slightly at the touch. 

“I’m sure that the pleasure’s all mine.” 

“Did we play chess in the universe that you came from?” 

Charles couldn’t help but let a smile come to his lips at that. “Whenever we could get away with it.” 

“Time for a game now?” 

“Certainly.” 

The chessboard was set up and the game started. They talked as they played. 

“Tell me,” Erik asked, “What was I like in that other dimension? How had the two of us left things?” 

“In truth, I’m not sure.” _And I don’t remember,_ Charles thought to himself. He wondered if this Erik would still feel a connection with him once Charles started forgetting things. He wouldn’t be half so good a chess opponent with dementia gnawing away at his memories. 

“Still, things couldn’t have been so different in your world. You still led the X-Men, I still led the Brotherhood, and the two of us played chess whenever an opportunity presented itself.” 

“Yes, but I’ve noticed some differences as well.” He hadn’t told anyone how badly the meeting with David had gone. If he couldn’t confide in Erik then he certainly couldn’t talk to anyone else. “In my world, David didn’t exist. I met with him, and I’m afraid that I ruined things. When he left he was very angry. I think I might have lost any chance I had of being his father.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that. It must be strange, discovering a son that you’d never had.” 

“At first I thought it was all rather wonderful. Now I just wish that I could reverse time so that our first meeting went better. I might never get to know him properly. Did you ever meet him?” 

To Charles’ surprise, Erik nodded. “I met him several times. We went on a mission with you, Rogue, and Gambit in Paris when he was about fifteen. I last saw him about eight months ago.” 

“What was he _like_?” Charles breathed, knowing how eager he must sound. 

Erik thought for a moment before replying. “Driven. Intelligent. Bold. And thoroughly committed to making the world a better place for mutants.” 

“You almost sound as if you admire him.” 

For that comment, Charles was rewarded with a sly smile. “He’s more driven to action than you ever were. Besides, he outsmarted me, and I’ve always had a healthy respect for anyone who could beat me in a fight.” 

“David outsmarted you?” 

“He stole my helmet. Floated it right off my head with telekinesis, and then he told me that I should wear it with a chin strap next time.” 

Charles laughed. Underneath, he felt a certain degree of loss. The boy who’d sat in his office and said that he didn’t understand why Charles would want him was a far cry from the boy who stole Erik’s helmet right off of his head. He’d probably never get to see that side of David, a side that was almost… playful. 

“I do worry that the other me treated him cruelly.” Charles said, trying to downplay his concern for David. 

“You were, well, distant is probably the best word for it. But that didn’t stop David from hanging off your every word. He’d have done absolutely anything to make you proud.” Erik snorted. “Oh, I can hardly talk about being distant. It’s not like I have much of a relationship with my children.” 

“It was just the same in my world.” 

“They’re friends, did you know that? Your David and my Lorna. She’s a few years older than him, but they met on Muir Island and they’ve kept up something of a correspondence ever since.” 

“Do you think _they_ ever get together and play chess?” 

They both chuckled at that. “Probably not,” said Erik. “I’d say that David is certainly smart enough to play, but Lorna flat-out refused to let me teach her. Teenage rebellion can take strange forms.” 

Their game ended with stalemate. After putting the chess set away, Erik sat on the couch and Charles transferred from his chair so that he could side beside him. After what felt like hours of talk, and perhaps was hours (the sky was beginning to darken), Erik asked about the X-Men from Charles’ world. 

Charles didn’t reply. He couldn’t. 

Erik sensed Charles’ turmoil. “What happened, Charles?” 

But Charles knew that he could never tell Erik about what he’d done; he didn’t want to find out the exact limits of Erik’s capacity for forgiveness. At the same time, he knew he had to say something. 

“They died,” he breathed. “The died and I couldn’t stop it.” He could feel the sorrow rising in his throat, but he was determined not to cry. 

Erik reached out to cup Charles’ face in one hand. He ran his thumb across Charles’ cheekbone. “Oh Charles, dear Charles. You never did have an easy life.” 

Slowly, so slowly that Charles didn’t need his telepathy to know exactly what Erik was doing, Erik leaned forward and kissed him. 

It was everything Charles had ever wanted. 

It was everything Charles had ever been afraid of. 

For a bare handful of seconds, he was lost to the sensation of Erik’s lips, the gentle strength in the hand that cupped his face, the smell of the other man’s cologne. 

Then reason returned, and he pulled away. 

Erik’s surface thoughts flashed with worry. “Did – did we never do that in your world?” he asked Charles. 

“Once,” Charles replied, a little out of breath. “Once, when we were young and foolish and afterwards we said we’d never do it again.” 

“Surely you must have wanted to, at times? Otherwise you wouldn’t have kissed me back.” 

Charles gripped the couch as if it would somehow steady the storm of emotions inside him. His heart was a wind-whipped sea. “Of course I did. Some days I could think of barely anything else. Were – were we together, then?” 

“Nothing so well-defined. We stole our moments… well, whenever we could get away with it.” he said, turning Charles’ words back on him. 

“How far did we go?” Charles rasped, needing to know the answer more than anything else in that moment. 

Erik took Charles’ hand and twined their fingers together. “All the way, darling. Everything except marriage.” He kissed the back of Charles’ hand. “We still could, if you wanted.” 

Charles dropped Erik’s hand. “We shouldn’t. Our memories of each other – they’re not really of _each other._ We’re practically strangers, Erik.” 

“We don’t have to stay that way. All we need is time, and there’s plenty of that still left to us.” 

“Just because I want it doesn’t mean that I should–” 

Erik cupped Charles’ face again, and it cut Charles’ voice off cleanly. “So you want it.” He leaned forward once more, brushing their lips together so softly as to be almost intangible. “You want _me._ ” 

_Oh,_ thought Charles, _To hell with it then._ Out loud, he said: “Of course I do.” He pulled Erik closer until they were practically in each other’s laps and moved in for a kiss that turned out to be far less chaste than the previous two had been. 

He lost himself in Erik for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to keep this chapter in the main fic, but at the end of the day, this story was about the relationship between Charles and David, not Charles and Erik.
> 
> Comics!David really did steal Magneto’s helmet right off of his head. It is my personal headcanon that David gave Erik’s helmet to Lorna. She reshaped it, spray-painted it green, and now she uses it as a fruit bowl.
> 
> In the comics David and Lorna were a part of the Muir Island Mutants, and both were victims of the Shadow King. It’s never mentioned in the comics, but I reckon that kind of shared experience is enough for a friendship to form.
> 
> In the movie Logan we never find out what happened to Erik, and I wanted to honour that here. Charles doesn’t remember, and he’s never going to be able to remember.
> 
> David’s mission with Charles, Erik, Rogue, and Gambit happened in the Legion Quest comics.
> 
> And yeah, Charles and Erik are an item now.


End file.
